The End And What Follows
by Schildkroete
Summary: Story focusing on Vimes, Vetinari and Death. AnkhMorpork has been destroyed and the end of the world is near. Fortunately, some men are very interested in stopping that from happening. Unfortunately, they’re dead already.
1. Prologue

The End And What Follows

By Schildkroete

There had been a short pain, then nothing. Sam Vimes got back onto his feet and was not even surprised to see his own body lying on he ground before him. He had known the moment he'd seen the spear flying toward him that he was not going to survive this.

At least it had been fast…

When he looked up, he saw that the world around him had changed. All sound had faded away and the colours had vanished to be replaced by various shades of red. A wind he had not noted before was tearing at his hair and clothes. Up in the sky the sun had become a watery red ball. Vimes stared at it in dismay. He had spent most of his life in the Night Watch – he'd never planned to end his existence at day.

Which brought him to the conclusion that his existence indeed had ended – and that he did not feel very none-existent anyway. Vimes never thought much about what would happen after he died before exactly that happened, but if he had ever bothered to imagine an afterlife, it wouldn't have been like this.

Even here, Ankh-Morpork was burning.

Vimes stared at the flames as if he hadn't seen them before and in a way he hadn't. For the first time he really took notice of his surroundings, in space and in time. The past came back to him, up to the events that led to him looking down onto is own body on the ground.

The war that had become the city's downfall had lasted for only two days. It wasn't even over yet but it would be in less than five hours if Sam was any judge, and there was not doubt which site would loose.

And it wasn't even their fault! The people of this city had a tendency to jump into any kind of trouble with a broad grin, a shout and a long club; combined with an invincible philosophy of "No one can beat us!" it was a miracle Ankh-Morpork had survived this long. Had their opponents knocked on the gates of the city and asked: Hey, we have a giant army and terrible weapons, would you like to fight a war against us? they wouldn't even have been able to finish the sentence. But they didn't knock on the gate. They just appeared, without warning.

He would have understood if the Ankh-Morporkians had got themselves killed because of their own stupidity, Sam thought. That was what he always expected, anyway. But they didn't even have a chance to make this their fault. It just wasn't fair!

Two days ago, no one here even thought of war and destruction and slaughter. There had been other things on their mind, because almost two months ago Lord Vetinari had disappeared all of a sudden, the watch had been busy looking for him, the guilds had been busy arguing over his replacement, the other lords had been busy sending the city even further into chaos and the everyone else had been busy watching the mess and hoping for something to tell their grandchildren.

Seemed like there wouldn't be any grandchildren now.

And suddenly it all made sense. Of course. He had already wondered how such a big army could appear in front of the gates without anyone knowing about it. Because Vetinari would have known. Vetinari knew everything. Vetinari knew things about you that you didn't know yourself. But he was gone, and in the chaos that followed nobody thought of the possibility that anyone might appear in a few days to wipe this city off the face of the disc. Whoever attacked them – and Sam realised with new bitterness that he didn't even know who it was – they did indeed have quite a good plan. And what was worse: it worked.

Why the hell didn't he think of this before?

BECAUSE BEING DEAD OPENS YOUR MIND FOR A LOT OF THINGS.

Vimes spun around at the sound of this voice and saw the speaker standing on a pile of rubble, a tall, black robed figure carrying a scythe. He wasn't surprised.

"So, this is it then," he said, looking in vain for any traces of the bitterness he thought he should be feeling. "Just like that."

YES.

And now? Sam was pretty sure that he was supposed to go somewhere, not to remain here in this red world of destruction. But here he was, and Death wasn't helping. In fact, he wasn't even looking into his direction anymore. It was only then that the former Duke of Ankh noticed another figure beside the great reaper of mankind, which was surprising because that figure was clad in black as well and lacked any traces of the general redness surrounding it.

Sam stared. So Vetinari was dead as well. He had already suspected it for weeks, but seeing the proof still came as a shock. Somehow, the death of his often cursed ruler hit him much harder than his own.

Slowly Vimes walked over to the ruins in front of which Vetinari was kneeling on the ground, less than a ghost to the world of the living. The man met is gaze briefly and then he looked down. And Sam realised with new certainty that he was ashamed.

'He thinks this is his fault,' he realised, bewildered. Maybe what the skeleton had said was true and he really did see more that while alive, for he was sure he would not have noticed this before. But if he was right, how could Vetinari believe something this absurd? He should have known that there was nothing he… Or was there? After all Vimes had no idea what he had done in the past two months. But he knew deep down inside that this man would never knowingly have done something to harm the city. The city was his life.

Or had been, at least.

And suddenly Sam was at a loss for words.

"How long are you… I mean…" Vetinari pretended not to hear him and Vimes' voice trailed off. Something seemed so very wrong about this whole situation.

HE HAS BEEN DEAD FOR TWO DAYS, said Death helpfully. Vimes turned to look at him.

"Two days? Then why is he still here?"

The dark figure shrugged.

SOMETHING IS NOT GOING WELL HERE, it said, and managed to express a mixture of annoyance and mild worry while the tone of its voice didn't change at all. HE IS NOT MEANT TO BECOME A GHOST, I WOULD KNOW THAT. BUT HE APPEARS TO BE UNABLE TO LEAVE THIS PLACE. The words 'Do something about that' trailed unspoken behind. Apparently Death was someone who wanted to do his job right and Vimes felt he could like him for that.

"Why not?" he asked.

THE BOND IS TOO STRONG, IT SEEMS.

Sam looked back at the man he once thought he knew, if never understood. Maybe being dead opened your mind not only to thoughts but also to emotions, he thought. Imagine all those emotions this man always suppressed coming for him, in frond of a burning city… It would make sense, wouldn't it?

Somewhere nearby a large building collapsed and a low rumbling sound could be heard in the former soundlessness of this world. Vetinari turned to the source of the sound and Vimes thought that he looked downright desperate, lost. The wind appeared to have gotten stronger.

And what was he supposed to do now? Something in Death's words had implied that he would not leave here before Vetinari did, and he certainly had no interest in staying here. What was that skeleton still doing here, anyway, if he wasn't going to do anything helpful? Didn't he have something to do elsewhere? One should think so with all those people dying here. And if they all ended up here, Sam would expect this place to be pretty crowded by now. Which obviously it wasn't.

And he still didn't know what to do.

"Uhm… Sir?" he tried for a start and sat down on the ground in front of the other man. And Vetinari finally looked at him, his face carefully blank. "Sir Samuel," he greeted, as if he had not seen him before. "It seems the city truly is lost, when not even you managed to somehow survive this." How true – until today Sam had been impossible lucky when it came to not dying. Well, it just had to end someday…

"I could say the same to you," he grumbled. At least the man was talking to him – somewhat of an improvement, he thought, though he surely would have been of another opinion, had they been alive.

Another thought that had been lurking at the edge of his awareness came to his mind. "Two days…?" he mumbled. If Vetinari had died only two days ago, what the hell had he been doing all the time since his disappearance months ago? And how did he die, in fact?

He opened his mouth to pose exactly that question, but stopped himself when those two thoughts mixed up to form a new suspicion. 'Excuse me, but have you been tortured to death?' somehow didn't seem like the right thing to ask.

"Sir," he said instead. "There is nothing we can do here." The former Patrician looked right through him and apparently wanted to say something, but then he just closed his eyes and sighed, defeated. And Sam was back at the beginning.

Great. His boss seemed to have forgotten about his presence, Death was just standing behind him doing nothing and all around him a bloody red version of the city he had lived in all his life was going down in flames. Definitely not the best of his days.

Eventually Vimes reached out a hand to touch Vetinari's shoulder, half expecting to pass right trough it, as a propper ghost should do. So he was almost shocked when his skin collided with the very real seeming fabric of the other man's robe. Apparently being dead wasn't that different from being alive, provided everyone else was dead as well.

Vetinari flinched at the touch but Vimes refused to give in to the sudden urge to get his hand back while it was still connected to what he believed to be his body and hide behind the nearest rock. Instead he took what was left of his courage and wrapped his arms around the man to pull him close before he could do anything to stop him. Vetinari went stiff for a moment, but Vimes grinded his teeth and refused to let go while he felt his heart pound wildly in his chest which was just _pathetic_, because he was _dead_, damn it, and shouldn't even have a heart and…

Something happened. In his arms Vetinari went limp and his thin body began to shake with soundless sobs. Sam absent-mindedly began to stroke his hair and for the first time his thoughts returned to his family, wondering if they had made it out safely. Death would know, he thought, but when he looked up, he saw that the world had begun to fade away. Death was nowhere to be seen.

---

Death allowed himself a sigh of relief when the two men began to fade away from this world. There were a lot of strange things going on, that much was sure, and he was glad that at least this little problem was solved. He would have hated to leave a job unfinished.

With the skullish version of a frown the reaper of mankind looked around once again. He had never been in this strange, red-coloured place before, which meant more or less that this sphere had not existed yesterday. Something strange was going on, indeed.

At least these two humans were gone, he thought as he turned to take care of the countless other beings that were ending their lifes this day. So he didn't have to worry about them anymore.

He would not have been very pleased, had he known how wrong he was in this regard.

-tbc-

May 08, 2005


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

When Sam opened his eyes he found himself surrounded by golden corn, moving softly in a breeze he could not feel. The sky was black. And Vetinari was still there, stirring softly in his arms as if to protest against Sam's growing suspicion that he had indeed fallen asleep there. Finally, the Patrician lifted his head and looked around in mild interest.

"Well," he noted after a few moments. "Not quite what I had expected."

Sam grunted. "Don't tell me you actually had plans for this?"

"Of course I had. I was rather hoping for white clouds and angels with harps," Vetinari said with an expression so blank that Vimes needed a few seconds to realise the man was joking.

"I doubt you would fit in there," he said.

"I imagine few people would."

"And even fewer would want to, if there is a risk of meeting you in that place." Being overly careful with what to say made no sense anymore, Sam decided. What should the guy do about it, anyway? Fire him?

"One more reason to like it," said Vetinari calmly. Sam shrugged. No point in arguing with that.

Beside him Vetinari untangled his long limbs and stood up. "Hm," he said.

Vimes followed his example and got to his feet as well. The landscape they fond themselves in presented itself in general shades of black – the golden fields being the only exception. About two hundred meters away, the fields ended and Sam could make out a house in the distance – it was black – some trees – black – and something that looked like a blooming garden. The latter was too far away to see any details, but if there were indeed flowers there, Sam was willing to speculate on their colour. Vetinari, he thought sourly, fit into these surroundings perfectly. Still, compared to before it was an improvement.

"And where are we now?" he asked no one in particular. All this still felt rather weird to him. He had always imagined being a little more insubstantial when dead, but when he reached down he felt the corn between his fingers and where they had sat the ears were bend and flat.

"How about we go and find out?" said Vetinari and began to move towards the house, leaving Vimes not choice but to follow or, well, not. He did follow, mainly because of the lack of alternative. In the distance he now noticed quite a lot of high mountains in the colour of - surprise, surprise – black.

"You sure you didn't have anything to do with the creation of this place?" he asked, mindlessly trampling down the plants in front of him. "The colour suits you."

"Pretty sure," said his former boss without turning. "I would have left out the corn."

Vimes snorted. There the bastard was, back in his old sarcastic self. It dawned to Sam that whatever state he had seen him in earlier, it was over. Another improvement, definitely. Seeing Vetinari so… _defeated_ had unsettled him more than he would ever be willing to admit.

The silence that followed gave Sam for the first time a chance to really think about his situation. He couldn't quite decide what was worse: being dead, confused and all alone, or being dead, confused and with Vetinari. And while he stared grumpily at the narrow back in front of him his thoughts travelled back to the real world and for the first time he felt some emotions connected with the life he had left behind. Again he wondered if Sybil and his little son were still alive and well. Had they been able to flee the city, or did they, just like him, wander through a weird landscape in the company of their worst nightmare?

He smirked at that and thought that probably he was being unfair here. After all, he could have gotten worse company, couldn't he? Lord Rust, for example. Or Nobby's undergarments. After so many years connected to a body like that, he was sure they had developed a life of their own…

"Do you have any idea who lives here?" he asked just to break the silence that lasted much too heavy on this place.

"Yes."

"Yes?" Same echoed, surprised. "Ah. And when did you plan on telling me?"

Vetinari had reached the black house and stopped in front of a black door that looked like a servant entrance. "Hm?" he asked, as if he had been in deep thought and only now realised Vimes' question. "What makes you think I was going to tell you?"

Vimes only stared at him in response. Yes, that was Havelock Vetinari as he remembered him. He knew for sure because he felt a sudden urge to strangle the man.

"There doesn't appear to be a doorbell," he said after a while when he could think of nothing better to respond. "Seems like we'll have to knock."

Vetinari smiled. "I imagine he doesn't have people knocking at his door very often," he said. "But I doubt he is home right now. I also doubt that this door is locked."

Sam tried the doorknob and it turned without resistance. The door swung open noiselessly and he frowned inwardly. The part of him that was labeld 'Watchman' was unwilling to accept that anyone would leave a house unlocked while away, even in a weirdly-spooky place like this.

"As I said, I don't think many people would come here by choice," Vetinari said as if he had read Vimes' mind – a possibility he wasn't going to rule out completely. "Besides," the Patrician added as he walked past Sam and into the house, "if the owner isn't home, it doesn't have to mean that the house is empty."

"What do you mean?" asked Sam, or at least intended to ask. Actually, he only said "What do y…" before he was stopped. In front of him Vetinari suddenly stepped aside in a motion so fast Vimes couldn't even _see_ it and out of the corner of his eye he noticed a movement that resulted in the world going black before he could even finish the third word. He thought he heard an audible 'Thud' when something hard and heavy hit his skull.

When the light came back, he found himself lying in the doorway. "Fascinating," a voice said. "Dead and still able to get knocked out. I must say, Sir Samuel, that you never case to surprise me."

Vimes muttered something unfriendly and took the offered hand. A sharp pain shot through his head when Vetinari pulled him to his feet, and the other man lifted an eyebrow as he winced.

"Really, Vimes, I would have expected your reactions to be a bit faster than that."

"They would have been faster, had I not been so busy stabbing mental daggers into your back," Vimes muttered under his breath. Vetinari tilted his head.

"Maybe it would have helped if you had used your mental resourced for something more useful, like paying attention to your surroundings," he said, unimpressed. Once again, Sam wished for a knife.

"What hit me, anyway?" When he looked around, he saw it. A few steps away, a man was sprawled out on the dark floor, apparently knocked out as well. An old man, Sam noted. Old and skinny. Beside him lay something that looked suspiciously like a wooden ladle. The Duke of Ankh rubbed the back of his acing head. Now _this_ was embarrassing…

"Who's that?" he asked, hoping that his face wasn't quite as red as he thought it was.

He never found out if Vetinari would have had an – useful – answer to that question, because just then another player entered the stage. Sam could feel his presence before he could see him, and when he spoke his voice sounded like the door of a cathedral falling shut in a deep hole.

WHAT, he said, IS GOING ON HERE?

---

Death was not altogether pleased with the situation. First the biggest city on the whole disk got destroyed which resulted in quite a lot of work, then the fabric of reality more or less began to disintegrate, and when he returned home, he found his house invaded by dead people. Death did not fall victim to moods, because you needed a functionating body to develop something like that, but had he had a mood right now it would not have been a good one.

He had demanded for them to explain how they had gotten here and the grumpy looking man with the ruffled hair demanded the same of him. Death had to admit that he was mildly confused; he was used to the souls of the dead disappearing after he did his job, or go to whatever place they thought they should end up in. He was not used to them coming to his house, looking very solid, and knocking Albert out.

"I understand that this is not a usual turn of events," said the tall, dark haired man after they all had calmed down a bit and settled down in the kitchen.

NO. YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE.

"We don't actually _want_ to be here, you know." The man called Vimes wore an expression on his face normal humans only got by chewing lemons for at least an hour. From what Death had heard of the events taking place before his arrival, he had been greeted by Albert with a ladle – Albert, who was right now sitting beside the stove, pressing an ice-filled towel against his head. He did not appear to be very happy with the company – his expression was actually rivalling Vimes'. They glared at each other like children ready to get into a fight.

But for now they were ignored. Vetinari looked very thoughtful for a moment, before he glanced at Death over steepled fingers.

"Do you know what exactly is happening?" he asked solemnly.

Death thought for a moment. Not about the question but whether or not to answer it. Those men certainly were not to blame for this situation. But he was still not in a good mood and they were still mere humans, who had no rights in this place. Yet, something about this man told him that being stubborn would not be a good idea right now, human or not.

NO, he said. THINGS ARE NOT AS THEY SHOULD BE, BUT I DON'T KNOW THE CAUSE.

"What exactly is different?"

A lot. Usually, Death knew the future, because he remembered it. But now the future he remembered did hot happen. The fall of Ankh-Morpork had never been part of it, and a lot of people had died before they should have. And some weren't as dead as they should be. And were in a place they should not have been in…

COME WITH ME, he offered after a while. I'LL SHOW YOU.

---

The room was dark and endless, the boards on the walls crowded with countless hourglasses. Sand was running through them, falling constantly from future to past. Their soft sound filled the room like the acoustic version of a shroud.

Vetinari walked along the boards slowly while Death waited in the doorway. In the faint light he read the names of the beings whose lives these glasses represented, watched their time pass away in front of his eyes. It didn't take long for him to notice what exactly it was Death wanted him to see.

All these hourglasses were almost empty.

---

In the kitchen Sam was having a good time. After everyone whose presence could give him the creeps had left, he had spend some time fighting with the old man called Albert. They fought with words only, naturally, because they were grown men and they were civilised and because Sam didn't have a dagger. It had been nice. Arguing with Vetinari was pointless, and Death, it seemed, was even worse in this regard, so both of them enjoyed the opportunity to get rid of some boiling emotions. Afterwards, Albert invited Sam for dinner.

Only then did Vimes realise how hungry he was. Another thing that stroke him as rather odd, because there was hardly a chance of starving anymore, but he put that thought aside when he was presented with a meal entirely of his liking.

Albert wasn't too great a cook – his food was burned and in one word unhealthy, but Sybil's food had been like that all the time and Sam already found himself missing it. He had always liked her food; all those weird stuff the rich and noble usually ate had remained a mystery to him until the day he died, and beyond. He liked burned potatoes and meat with the consistence of old boots and Albert did his best not to disappoint him.

But the meal brought back memories of his family, and once again he decided to ask Death about their fate once he came back. If he wouldn't forget about it, that is. Again.

The door opened, but Death remained absent.

"He's gone to look something up," explained Vetinari, when he sat down beside Vimes. "He might have some answers for us soon."

"Oh, great," said Sam with a mouth full of food. "I also have some questions for him."

"I thought so." Albert offered some potatoes and Vetinari politely turned them down. "The world is ending, it seems." Sam nearly chocked.

"What do you mean, 'the world is ending'?"

"I mean, that all life on the disk is going to end. With the exception, perhaps, of some plants and animals. I did not check that out, I admit. Could I have a glass of water, please?"

Vimes found himself staring once again as he tried to grasp the meaning behind those words.

"You are joking," he finally decided.

"No. I think not." Vetinari took a sip from the water Albert had given him with an expression of I-worry-for-this-person's-mental-health. He and Vimes shared a look.

"You mean," Sam then said, just to make it clear, "that the world is going to end and everyone is going to die?"

"Indeed."

"Oh. And you say that just like that, totally unimpressed?"

"So it seems," said Vetinari. "Is that any problem for you?"

"A problem?" Sam burst out. "Everyone we know is going to die! My family, for example, and my friends, if they even are still alive. Surely you don't expect me to simply accept that?"

"Ah. And would you mind telling me what you are planning to do about it?" Vetinari asked with an expression of friendly interest. He seemed like someone who was talking about an interesting but entirely fictional book that was in no way connected to his own destiny. Sam couldn't believe it. He had quite a hard time in truly grasping what he just had heard. The world ending – it just didn't sound like something that actually happened. Still, deep inside, he felt that it was true. And this guy just sat there as if he didn't care at all!

But Sam knew better. Even Vetinari did have feelings; Sam had seen them in a moment he since then tried to forget, but right now he would have preferred everything to this blank mask of indifference. 'This can't mean nothing to him,' he thought. 'There must be someone, or something in the world he cares for!'

Or wasn't there? Sam refused to believe it, though everything about the Patrician's posture told him otherwise. And before he knew what he was doing, he swung a fist at him to slam that horrible empty expression off his face. One second later he found himself on the ground again, his right arm twisted painfully behind his back.

"What was that for?" a calm voice wanted to know. Sam struggled weakly but gave up when he felt a sharp pain shoot through his shoulder.

"Just felt like it," he snarled through grinded teeth. "Some people do that, you know? Feeling, I mean." There was a moment of silence, then the weight that pressed him down disappeared and his arm got released. He got back to his feet and angrily glared at Vetinari who looked back at him calmly and very, very serious. Behind him Albert watched the scene with a kind of amused confusion, obviously hoping for more action.

And in the doorway, Death watched the scene with a kind of confused confusion. Humanity, it seemed, would always remain a mystery to him.

---

IT APPEARS TO BE LIKE THIS, started Death after they had settled down in something that seemed to be a living room. THE DESTRUCTON OF ANKH-MORPORK CAUSED A GREAT DISTURBANCE IN THE SPIRITUAL WORLD. FOR EXAMPLE, IT GREATLY AFFECTED THE SPHERE OF THE GODS.

"Yes, that isn't surprising." Vetinari nodded. "The inhabitants of the city used to believe in anything."

"Especially if that belief somehow resulted in money," added Vimes.

YES. BUT NOT ONLY THE GODS GOT AFFECTED BUT ALSO THE WHOLE WORLD THAT LIES BEHIND WHAT YOU CALL REALITY. THIS DISTURBANCE CAUSED YOU TO COME HERE. IT ALSO SEEMES TO BE THE REASON WHY, DESPITE BEING GHOSTS IN THEORY, YOU STILL HAVE EVERY ATTRIBUTE OF A LIVING PERSON.

"Like getting hungry and tired." Sam snorted. "And getting hit by a ladle…"

YES.

"And how is this going to cause the collapse of all civilisation?" Vetinari wanted to know.

THERE WILL BE A WAR, INCLUDING ALL REGIONS OF THE DISK. MAGIC WILL BE ABUSED AND THE DUNGEON DIMENSIONS WILL EVENTUALLY JOIN THE FIGTH.

"But how can that be, just because our city is gone?" There was something Sam just didn't understand. "This isn't the first war Ankh-Morpork has lost."

INDEED. I BELIEVE OTHER FORCES ARE AT WORK HERE.

"Forces out to destroy the world?"

YES.

"Oh…" Sam fell silent. He wasn't much smarter now, but at least he knew why he had been hungry and why his head hurt. In fact, he still didn't understand it, but he had gotten an explanation, which meant that there had to be someone understanding it. It had to do for now.

Another thought awoke in his brain and shyly knocked on the outside of his mind, asking to be let in. Sam's mind opened its door and thought 'Oh.'

"Uhm," he began. "I have a family. I mean, I had one." The reaper looked at him. Vimes found it quite unsettling. "I would like to know if they are still alive."

There was a short silence.

YOU COULD LOOK FOR THEIR BOOKS IN THE LIBRARY, the skeleton then said. GO BACK TO THE KITCHEN AND ASK ALBERT TO SHOW YOU THE WAY.

Sam nodded gratefully and stood to leave the room. He had thought Death could just tell him whether or not they still lived, but though he had no idea what exactly this library was, if he could find answers there it was okay for him.

At the door, he stopped for a second and looked back into the room. From a distance, Vetinari looked rather frail, he thought – where had that man found the strength to press him down onto the floor? He also appeared incredibly tired, exhausted, and Vimes felt pang of – well, whatever it was, he did not want to feel it again.

Then he left and spent the next ten minutes trying to find his way back to the kitchen.

-tbc-


	3. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Many thoughts were crossing Sam's mind while he trotted behind Albert through a house that wasn't only much too dark for his taste but had also turned out to be much bigger on the inside than it had looked from the outside. Beside that it suffered from the weirdest dimensions Sam would ever had ever seen, had he actually seen them. But he didn't, because his mind dealed with these things by simply ignoring them.

He now knew who had attacked their city. It had been the Agatean Empire, a land so far away that Sam hardly knew it even existed. Apparently the Empire had been ruled by a bunch of old Barbarians for some time, and then they were gone and whoever replaced them had decided 'Hey! Let's go conquer Ankh-Morpork!' Or something like that.

Vetinari had told him about this earlier. He still hadn't said anything about what exactly had happened to himself, but for some reason Sam had been afraid to ask. And he very much doubted he would have gotten an answer. It wasn't his business anyway.

Even without Vetinari telling him, Sam knew that the Agatean Empire was not only very large but also had an army with as many men as Ankh-Morpork had inhabitants. So it made sense that the war had been a short one. But that empire also lay very far away on the Counterweight Continent. So they would have needed to cross the ocean with quite a lot of ships before they could do anything. Could something like that happen without anyone noticing, Sam wondered? Not likely. So how did they do it? Death had mentioned something about evil forces out to destroy, well, the world. Or life. Or whatever. They were out for something, that much Sam had understood. So they had helped…? Did that make sense? What 'forces' anyway? For a moment Sam regretted that he had left without asking, but he pushed that thought aside when they reached the library.

It was impossible to measure the size of the room by simply looking at it, for the view was blocked by bookshelves. But even so, he had a feeling that the walls were very, very far away.

"The library," said Albert, quite unnecessarily. "Every being has a book here in which their life is written down. If you want to know something about someone you just have to get the right book and read."

A part of Vimes thought that a place like this would have made being a copper in Ankh-Morpork so much easier. Another part wondered how he was supposed to find a single book within less than five thousand years. That part looked up the next bookshelf that went up to the very far away ceiling and said, "Arg."

Albert proved helpful at this point.

"When you're looking for a special book you'll only have to extend you hand and say the name of the person in question."

"Okay," said Sam but did nothing until Albert grumbled something about going to bed and left. For some reason, he was unwilling to do anything with anyone watching.

But even when he was alone, he hesitated for a moment before he did extend his hand, palm up, feeling just a little silly. He opened his mouth to speak, closed it, opened it again and finally said "Sybil Ramkin" into the empty air. Less than a second later a book was resting on his hand. It read 'Sybil Ramkin-Vimes' on the cover and was surprisingly heavy. Sam looked at the name for a long second and then moved to open it.

And hesitated.

He had been worried for his family, but now, with the answers in his hand, he was afraid. For the first time it really occurred to him that what he would read in this book could not be the answers he was hoping for.

Finally, he took a deep breath and opened the book on the first page. He read a few lines and closed it again when he realised that this was Sybil whole life he was looking at, from the beginning to, perhaps, the end. He should have expected something like this, he thought, but he hadn't, because he didn't think about it. And now he stood here, totally shocked and being angry with himself.

It just didn't seem right to read it.

But he had to, hadn't he? When he wanted to get his answers, he would have to read at least a few pages. At the end. Yes, that was what he would do. Jump to the last pages, see, if Sybil and little Sam were still alive and then close it and leave. Yes.

And what would he do should Sybil be dead?

Nothing, Sam thought bitterly. Because he was damn fucking dead himself. His opportunities were pretty limited because of that.

Time to find out. To his mild surprise, Vimes realised that his hands were shaking when he opened the book at the last page – and found it empty. Confused he skipped through the pages and saw that quite a lot of pages had nothing written onto them, when he finally reached the end of the text. He took another breath and began to read. Just a few lines. Then he sighed in relief. According to the book they were both alive and on their way to Pseudopolis. They didn't even know he was dead yet. Sam felt a pang of guilt, but there was nothing he could do about that. For the first time, he realised that life moved on without him. It was strange thinking like this, but he was getting used to it.

Unwilling to spy on his wife's life any more, he closed the book, and just when he was wondering where to put it, it vanished into thin air. Assuming it had returned to were it belonged, Sam turned to walk out of the library and back to the room he had come from. But at the door he stopped. Another idea had come to his mind, and wouldn't leave there. He shouldn't do it. It wasn't right. And it was none of his business. He shouldn't do it.

But he wanted to know.

Sam spend a full minute staring at the door in front of him before he turned back to the room and extended his had, palm up.

"Havelock Vetinari," he said.

---

"Of course, this all still doesn't explain why we have been sent here in the first place." Vetinari leaned back, rubbing his eyes. He was feeling rather tired, like he hadn't slept for days. Which was the case, but he'd never thought it would matter.

I BELIEVE IT HAS SOMETHING TO DO WITH REALITY TRYING TO REPAIR ITSELF.

"How so?"

I DO NOT YET KNOW FOR SURE, BUT IT SEEMS LIKE THERE MIGHT BE A POINT WERE THE WORST CAN BE STOPPED FROM HAPPENEING.

Suddenly, Vetinari was very much awake.

"You're saying we could save the city?"

AND THE WORLD.

"Ah. Of course."

I'M NOT CERTAIN YET, Death admitted. I WILL INFORM YOU ONCE I KNOW FOR SURE. He seemed to sense what Vetinari wanted to say next and added: YOU NEEDN'T WORRY ABOUT RUNNING OUT OF TIME, IN THIS PLACE.

"I thought so." There was one more thing: "Why us, of all people?"

I DON'T KNOW.

"Oh."

BUT I BELIEVE, Death went on, IT MIGHT BE BECAUSE YOUR CONNECTION TO THAT PLACE WAS THE STRONGEST, OF ALL PEOPLE THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN ABLE TO DO SOMETHING.

"Do something. I see." Vetinari suppressed a yawn. Job description: Looking for someone able to save the world. Conditions: You have to be dead. Good Heavens…

"I understand that you are to come personally to those of royal families?"

THAT IS TRUE.

"Even if they are not ruling anywhere?"

YES.

"So, did you happen to take someone called Carrot Ironfounderson these days?"

There was a sort pause, as if Death was trying to remember.

NO.

"I can assume that he is still alive, then?"

SO IT SEEMS.

"Hm." Vetinari wasn't quite sure if this was a good thing. Of course, for Carrot it probably was, but he was sure that the young man would have been here as well had he been dead – given, of course, that Death's assumption was true.

Well, they would have to do without him.

Suddenly he just wanted to sleep.

ARE YOU TIRED?

Briefly Vetinari considered lying like he would have done in life. But here, now, it would be pointless.

"Very," he answered.

INTERESTING.

It probably was. Vetinari found it difficult to appreciate this fact properly with the world spinning around him more and more. But still…

"I have another question."

ASK, said Death patiently. He didn't seem to have any plans to spend the evening.

"Vimes and I, we are without doubt much more solid than ghosts should be. We get hungry, tired, and should I stab a blade through my arm it would probably bleed. I can feel my heart beat. In fact, we behave very much like living beings." He paused for a moment, looking for the right words. In the end he settled for a simple "What would happen if we died? Again."

Death seemed to think about the answer, but it was hard to tell with his lack of face to read.

I DON'T KNOW, he finally admitted. BUT IN YOUR PLACE I WOULDN'T TRY TO FIND OUT.

---

As he'd expected Sam needed half an hour to find his way back to the living room without Albert guiding him. The dark corridors he passed seemed even darker than before now, and yet he could see without problems – and without any lights in sight. He decided not to think about it.

Just when he reached the room, Death entered through another door. He carried a woollen blanket in his arm which was, much to his surprise, _not_ black but dark brown. Vimes suppressed the impulse to rise his eyebrows at that – it seemed too much a Vetinari-thing to do.

DID YOU FIND YOUR ANSWERS? the skeleton asked. Sam grimaced.

"Yes," he said. And much more than that… Much more than he ever wanted to know. But he had to look, didn't he? Now all he could do was hope that Vetinari never found out about it.

GOOD.

"I suppose…" Sam mumbled and than added, rather loudly: "Oh." Because Death had walked over to the couch and draped the blanket over the motionless form of Havelock, Lord Vetinari, who had without any doubt fallen asleep there. Sam had never thought he'd see the day.

Or night. Or whatever. It was pretty much impossible to tell the time of day, if there even was such a thing as days here.

Seeing his boss – it was impossible not to think of him as that, even now – so unguarded was strange, though he had seen it before. In fact, he'd never really believed that this man would ever sleep without at least some poison running through his blood, least with someone present to see it. But he did look terribly tired – maybe there was a limit to everything.

Now that he thought about it, Sam was a little tired himself. For the lack of another couch, he would have to wait, or ask Death where to find a bed. Which he didn't want. Asking the reaper where to find a place to sleep was something a sane person just didn't do.

-tbc-

May 28, 2005


	4. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Night had fallen over this part of the disk quite a long while ago. In fact it was so long a while that the sky was already brightening again. The first lazy rays of a small sun were crawling over the land, over mountains and fields and quite a lot of dirt to a small city called Sto Helit. They crawled over buildings and streets, and through the window into a room that showed all symptoms of being a bedroom, namely four walls and a bed. It hesitated a little before it dared to crawl over the person who occupied the bed as well – or rather, the person who would like to occupy the bed, and who had done so until about one minute ago.

Susan Sto Helit crossed her arms and glared angrily at the dark figure in front of her. "Whatever it is," she stated, "I'm not going to do it!"

Death seemed to consider his possible reactions to this.

THE WORLD IS COMING TO AN END, he settled for, but his granddaughter only grimaced and refused to say anything until she heard the single word she knew had to follow a phrase like this.

AGAIN.

"That's what you said last time you decided to mess up my life. It's getting old."

LAST TIME THE WORLD DID END, Death reminded her.

"Oh, well…" Now it was Susan looking for a response. "That's still no excuse to come here and wake me in the middle of the night."

IT'S MORNING.

"I know what time it is!" Susan snarled.

There was a short silence.

ANKH-MORPORK HAS FALLEN, Death informed her. Susan shrugged.

"Yes, I noticed. I used to live there, you know?"

YES. The young duchess of Sto Helit only stared at her grandfather until he seemed to remember something. I'M VERY GLAD TO SEE YOU UNHARMED, he said.

Susan snorted.

"Well, what is it this time?" she then asked, sighing. "Don't tell me it's the auditors again."

IT'S THE AUDITORS. AGAIN.

"And what am I supposed to do against that?" Susan grumbled. She wasn't in a good mood – in fact she was tired and cold, because her nightgown was too thin and the stone floor she was standing on too icy. And she had no interest in saving the world once more. Having Death himself as a family member made life quiet hard, but at least he was present now, so she could growl at him. Because it was all his fault. She just wished he'd go away and let her sleep, and find someone else to save the world.

NOTHING.

"Huh?"

I HAVE NOT COME TO AKS FOR YOU TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT.

"So." Now Susan was really getting angry. How dare he come here, get into her life again and then ask absolutely nothing of her? "And why are you here then? Surely it's not a simple family visit."

I NEED YOUR HELP.

"Didn't you just say you wouldn't?" This was getting annoying.

I DON'T NEED YOUR HELP IN SAVING THE WORLD BUT I NEED YOUR HELP IN FINDING SOMEONE WHO'S HELP I NEED.

Susan's mind got blank. "What?" she asked. "Who?"

TIME.

Again Susan's mind needed a few seconds to find the connections between her grandfather's words and the world she knew.

"Time?" she said. "You mean Lobsang?"

YES.

"Why?"

BECAUSE I CAN NOT FIND HIM. YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT.

"I mean, why do you need him", Susan asked, still grumpy and rather annoyed that her Grandfather had not come to annoy her.

TO AVOID THE END OF THE WORLD, Death explained patiently. Susan sighed.

"Yes, I figured as much…"

---

In a place so far away that it couldn't even be called far away Sam Vimes opened his eyes to greet a new day. In fact, he opened his eyes to darkness.

"Oh, bugger," he mumbled. So much for his hope that all had been but a bad dream…

---

In the kitchen Albert was preparing an unhealthy breakfast. When he looked into the sink he noticed two plates waiting to be cleaned.

Two. Plates.

"Oh bugger," he grumbled. So much for his hope that the invasion of this house had been but a nightmare…

---

After a while Sam realised that it wasn't really dark. Just black, but he could see amazingly well with all the blackness and no light. Just like yester… just like before he had gone to sleep.

He had gone to sleep in a large bedroom Death had shown him before disappearing somewhere. It looked like someone had lived here once, but now it was deserted – not that Sam would have minded. Sharing the bed with anybody would have been rather uncomfortable, anyway…

On a chair nearby lay a pile of clothes. They had not been there when he had gone to sleep, but he refused to think about it for the moment. Black pants and a long, rather old fashioned shirt coloured in a strong brownish red, like dried blood. Sam would have preferred to keep his own clothes but they appeared to be a little gone. So much for that.

Having dressed and looked in vain for a bath, he left the bedroom and went looking for the kitchen.

He didn't find it, at least not at once. Instead he stumbled into the living room – strange using this word here, Sam thought, but he could think of nothing better – where he had talked to the others yesterday, and found Vetinari as he had left him asleep on the couch. He hadn't moved all night.

Here, too, Vimes found a pile of clothes on a chair nearby. They were black. His view on the world was saved for another day.

'I've wished him dead so many times,' Sam thought looking at the sleeping man, 'but not like that.' Unbidden memories sprung to his mind – he should never have read that stupid book. This was his boss, after all, and he didn't want to feel sorry for him. He was used to being angry at this person; it was also what had kept him from going mad when they first arrived here. And when Vetinari was awake, he would act his usual annoying self and make Sam angry once again and the world would be alright and he could forget for a moment, but right now Vetinari wasn't awake, and Sam could not forget.

No one deserved to die like that, he thought bitterly, which wasn't quite true. In fact Vimes could think of quite a few people who would deserve it, but Havelock Vetinari, he realised, was not one of them.

After a while he turned and left the room as quietly as possible.

---

Albert was staring at the food in his pan, wondering whether or not it would be enough for tree people, including himself, which would actually mean four people. He was doubtful.

The door opened and one of their unexpected quests entered. Ah, thought Albert, it was the nice one. The 'nice one' in this case meant that it was the one who wasn't scary and who had never given him a headache. The guy grunted something that could have been Good Morning and Albert grunted something in return that could have been anything.

"Do you think this'll be enough for three people?" he then asked.

The man, Vimes if he remembered correctly, stepped beside him and looked at the indefinable, burned objects swimming in a pool of fat.

"Looks okay for me," he said.

"Is your black phantom not with you?"

Vimes snorted. "Still sleeping. He wouldn't eat this, anyway."

Albert only gave an enthusiastic "Pah," to this. "One of those guys who only eat nearly extinguished exotic animals, huh? Would explain why he's so thin."

"Actually he's one of those guys who live off bread and water."

"So?" Albert frowned, then thought a little, and then grinned. "Well, I think I can serve him there."

---

Vetinari entered the kitchen only fifteen minutes later, and his damp hair indicated that he had not only found the room much faster than Vimes did but had also happened to find a bathroom on the way.

The day before, Vimes had worn his usual copper uniform, which only now stroke him as a little wired because he had not worn it when he was killed. Just like he was sure Vetinari had not worn his usual robes he had seen him in yesterday. However, now they were gone and he was dressed in plain black pants that were quite a bit too wide and a black shirt with a somewhat high but open collar that almost reached his knees while the sleeves didn't quite reach his wrists. Somehow, it looked incredibly elegant on him and made Sam feel terribly plain and common. But he had been plain and common all his life so he didn't mind. He liked plain and common.

"Good morning, gentlemen," Vetinari greeted as if he was just having his weekly meeting with any of those annoying guild heads, and sat down on the chair closest to the door. Sam had heard somewhere – probably during one of those boring rich-people-parties Sybil had made him go to – that black clothes would make people appear slender. They were right – Who was build like Vetinari should not wear black, Sam thought.

Albert only nodded to him and handed him some sliced bread on a plate, with a smile.

"Your master, I suppose, is right now attending to some matters of importance?"

"Oh, yes." Albert sat down as well and shrugged. "You know, he comes, he leaves – I don't ask him where he's going."

"Yes, that doesn't surprise me."

Albert frowned again, apparently unsure what to make of this answer, but remained silent. Sam was just happily eating his second helping of wonderfully burned and unhealthy food when he noticed something.

"Not hungry?" he asked.

"A little, perhaps," Vetinari said friendly.

"Then why aren't you eating your bread?"

"Because it has spent an unknown amount of time alone with the two of you in this room."

"What?" Albert spat. "Do you want to accuse us of poisoning it?"

"Let's say I'm not hungry enough to risk it."

"How rude!" Sam scolded with his mouth full. He swallowed. "After Albert was so friendly to give it to you. And really, I'm hurt! As if I'd ever done anything to harm you!"

Vetinari smiled. "If you are that offended by my rude words, I will give this to you as an apology," he said and put half of his food on each of their plates. Vimes stared at it.

"Too friendly," he grumbled.

"Why aren't you eating, Sir Samuel? I wouldn't happen to have been right with my rude accusations, would I?" Somehow, Sam felt that his boss was having just a little too much fun here.

"I'm just not a bread person," he mumbled but took a bite anyway. The super-hot klatchian spice-oil Albert had generously dripped all over it brought tears to his eyes, but he managed to chew a few times and even shallow the mouthful before he fell onto the table, struggling for breath.

---

Twenty minutes and eight glasses of cold water later, they were finishing their meal in silence, when suddenly Vetinari said: "Did you find your answers in the library?"

"Oh, yes," Sam mumbled, not looking up.

"Your family is alright, I hope?"

"Yes, they're safe for now." But not forever, if the world's really ending, he finished the sentence in his mind. For a moment, he thought he felt the Patrician stare at him in silence.

"So in this library you find the life of every person that ever lived? Interesting," Vetinari said in a conversational tone. "I imagine it must be incredibly practical for gathering information about anyone."

"That's true," Sam said carefully, not trusting where this could be leading.

"But," Vetinari continued. "those books must be something terribly private if everything about a life is written in them. I trust no one would read them unless it was absolutely unavoidable."

'He knows,' Sam thought, and bit his lips. 'He knows, of course, I knew he'd know, shit!'

What he said was: "You're right. No one should do that."

"Well, I'm glad we agree here, for once." With that, Vetinari rose from his chair and left the room without another word. Sam killed a curse between his teeth.

Albert stared at the closed door.

"Who the heck is this guy, anyway?" he wanted to know. Sam had almost forgotten he was there at all.

"Someone I don't want to piss off," he mumbled.

"Well," the old man stated after a few seconds of careful thinking. "I suppose this is not your lucky day."

-tbc-

July 29, 2005


	5. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

_There was only darkness, and icy coldness. He could not remember having fel__t the cold this sharply ever before, but the 'ever before' was getting farer and farer away from him and he had long since grown accustomed to it._

_Despite the numbness of his skin__, he thought he felt something warm and wet running down his arms but had cased to pay attention ages ago._

_Then there was sound penetrating the dark stillness in which all he could hear was his heart struggling for another beat. Footsteps – heavy boots on stone – voices, too low, too far away for him to understand or care, the sound of a door swinging open. Rough fingers touching his cheek, too real to be ignored, and his eyes snapped open, _presenting him with the sight of the desk he had been working on. For a moment, all he could hear was his heartbeat, too loud and too fast in his ears. Then he couldn't even hear that.

Vetinari rubbed his eyes, suddenly far from tired. It was hard to tell how much time had passed since he and Vimes had ended up here, but from the number of times Vimes and Death's servant Albert had gone to sleep since then, he guessed it had been at least three days, maybe four.

His eyes fell on the book he had been reading. He had spend quite a lot time in this room full of books the last days, trying to find out as much as he possibly could about these auditors Death had told him about. Maybe it wasn't really helpful, but it was still better than doing nothing. Yet, some of the books had the annoying habit of resisting to be read, or trying to read the reader in return. Not surprising then, that he was having weird dreams when falling asleep over them.

One more reason to try and avoid sleep, if possible.

---

"Show me the way to the library, please."

Sam nearly spit his coffee through the room when Vetinari suddenly appeared behind him without any warning.

"What?"

"The library. I'm sure you know which place I'm talking about."

"Why ask me? I have a hard time finding the kitchen every day."

"Oh, I'm sure you'll be very helpful, Sir Samuel," Vetinari said cheerfully in his unique Do-it-or-your-head-will-be-nailed-to-the-nearest-wall kind of way. Sam considered his opportunities.

One minute later he was leading his former boss through the headache-inspiring maze of Death's mansion. He had gotten lost after the first three steps and he just _knew _that Vetinari had noticed it, but instead of sending him away, the late patrician just trailed behind him in silence.

'Why the hell am I doing what he tells me?' Vimes asked himself as he looked into just another wrong room. 'He's not my boss anymore.' But bad habits die hard, and they die even harder when their death threatens to take you with them.

Literally.

---

Finally, after a dozen wrong turns, they found the room they had been looking for. Vimes shortly explained how to get the wanted book and turned to leave, but Vetinari stopped him for no obvious reason. Sam grinded his teeth; he could very well imagine why Vetinari would come here: He was still pissed that Vimes had read his book and was now going to pry a little into Sam's own private life. Worst of all, he wanted him to be present and watch. The urge to see if ghosts were still able to die got stronger by the second.

So the Duke of Ankh was rather surprised when Vetinari extended his hand and said: "Ankh-Morpork." He barely managed to escape with a quick jump backwards when a rain of books came down where he'd been standing just one second before.

Vimes made a noise. It didn't sound very intelligent but it pretty much summed up his thoughts. He stared. Finally, he said: "I thought only persons had a life-book."

"That's what I heard," Vetinari answered, picking up one of the books. It was pretty thick.

"Ankh-Morpork isn't a person," Vimes tried to make his point a little clearer. Vetinari didn't seem to pay much attention to him.

"Your mind is still as sharp as ever," he said, sounding as if his own mind was, well, elsewhere. "But it was not unlike a person in many aspects. You knew the city better than almost everyone else. I'm sure you noticed."

There was nothing Sam could have said, because the other man was right and facing the choice between telling him that and saying noting at all he chose silence.

Still, suspicion remained. "So…" he asked carefully. "You made me stay just to watch you call for these books?"

"Well, yes, I think I did." Vetinari looked at him, briefly, and tilted his head. "What exactly did _you _think I was up to?"

A brief silence. 'Will I strangle him?' Sam mused. 'Or will I use a knife?'

"Nothing," he said. "Never mind."

"Very well," Vetinari said and turned to the pile of books. "Since you're here already you can help me carry these to the office." Sam made a decision.

He would definitely strangle him.

---

"Are you not bored with plotting the murder of your ex-boss all day?" Albert asked half an hour later and continued dusting the several seemingly senseless belongings of his master that were standing around on boards and tables everywhere, while Sam paced through the room and ranted about how much Vetinari annoyed him. It was a rhetorical question but he answered it anyway.

"There is no better way to spend the day," he said and then grunted: "Especially here." Albert only gave a snort in reply.

It was nice having someone to complain to all day and Albert had a pleasingly grumpy personality, but he was no replacement for Nobby or Fred. Or Carrot, of course, but pointless rambling in Carrot's presence usually lead to a long and frustrating discussion everyone tried their best to avoid.

"What is he doing with those books?" Albert wanted to know somewhere between a board and a table. Vimes shrugged.

"Read them," he gave the most obvious answer he could think of. But after a moment he added, more helpfully: "He thinks in there he might find something of use in this situation. But I suppose he mostly wants something to busy himself with until we can finally do something about…" He gestured helplessly. "…all this."

The old man looked around the room and then shot him a look saying he didn't think 'all this' needed something to be done about. He had just dusted everything, after all.

At least, he was so kind as not to comment on it. "What about sleeping?" he suggested instead. "I could sleep for days if I had nothing else to do." Sam shook his head.

"He doesn't do that," he explained. "He isn't very much into sleeping."

It was true. When Death had said there was something they could do to save the world, Sam had thought they would just do it, at once. But apparently it wasn't that simple. Days had passed with nothing happening and even Vimes had started to get nervous. He needed something to do. Sitting around all day just wasn't something he was capable of doing. Otherwise he would have given up his work the day he married the wealthiest woman of Ankh-Morpork.

But at least he had been able to kill a lot of hours sleeping at a time he and Albert had agreed on calling 'Night'. Vetinari, he was quite sure, had never done that. Sometimes Sam got up at night and wandered around looking for the kitchen, and every time he had found the patrician sitting in front of a desk, in a room that could be called an office. Perhaps it was the only surrounding the guy was able to survive in, he mused, and grimaced when he remembered that surviving was no longer an option.

It was easy to forget.

Death came and went – Sam hardly ever saw him and didn't want to. The reaper had a job after all, and much to do these days. If they managed to prevent all this from happening, that work would be in vain, Sam suddenly realised. He wondered if Death would be pissed about the wasted time afterwards and asked Albert about it. The old man snorted again.

"Time", he said," is definitely not one of his problems."

He was wrong about that, but not in a way he could possibly think of.

---

That night, sleep wouldn't come, even for Vimes. He lay awake in bed, staring at the ceiling, and thought. He didn't like thinking very much these days. That way lay madness.

Absently he wondered whether or not Vetinari might have gone to sleep eventually. It was a ridiculous though, he knew, but he couldn't help it. They were dead but still they needed food and rest, and Vetinari had gotten little of the former and nothing of the latter in something Vimes assumed to be a whole week. How he was able to function like that remained a mystery.

He had never needed much sleep, Vimes remembered. There had been rumours that he never slept at all and Sam had been willing to believe them, but now… Now he knew it was nonsense, because Vetinari very obviously _needed_ sleep, and it was beginning to show. To someone who knew him as long as Sam did at least. He was even paler that usual, it was a surprise one couldn't look straight through him. His movements seemed less deliberate and the dark circles under his eyes seemed to have been painted with ink. In other words, he looked like he might drop dead any moment. Not that Sam minded. He wondered if the man was finally tired and slow enough for him to kick his butt. Repeatedly. If he hadn't passed out by himself, that is.

Finally Sam gave up on sleep and left his bed to check it out.

---

_The chain__s were gone. Carefully, he rubbed his acing wrists and couldn't believe it. This couldn't possible have happened, he knew, something was wrong. But his mind was foggy, he couldn't focus. Something was wrong and he couldn't name it. He had to get out of here._

_The air was icy, even colder than before, and damp. It smelled foul. Disgusting. He had to get out, quickly. Needed some fresh air._

_He stood slowly and some part of him was surprised that he was even able to. Wrong. The sound of footsteps was echoing through the darkness._

_Someone was coming. They had made a mistake in leaving him without restraints and now wanted to correct it. But he would not let them. The door opened with a sickening sound. Someone was going to die._

_They were careless, probably not expectin__g him to still be able to move. This was his only chance, he knew, and summoned all the strength he had left. The speed he was able to bring up surprised even him – _wrong_ – as he turned around and threw himself against the man that that had entered, smashing him against the clam stone wall while his hand grabbed the other's throat and _squeezed_._

---

"Gah! What the heck are you doing?" Vimes shouted as he was thrown against the wall and strangled. At least it was what he wanted to shout – as it was, he couldn't get out anything after the 'Gah'.

When he had entered, Vetinari still sat in the dimly lit room, behind his desk and in front of his books, as Vimes had expected. But just as he stepped into the room, the other man had jumped up and attacked him, before Sam had had any time to react. So much for his increasing lack of speed.

The grip around his throat was iron and suddenly Sam realised that there was a very realistic chance of him losing whatever life he had here. Where the brittle figure in front of him took that strength from he had no idea, but finding that out was not his most urgent concern right now. He grabbed the thin wrist and tried to pry it away – useless. What the hell was going on here?

The eyes that were staring at him from a deadly white face had a feverish gleam to them, and one look into their dark depths told Vimes that Vetinari was not even _seeing_ him right now. If Sam had seen the road to madness earlier this night, Vetinari had definitely taken it.

And now what? Dark spots began to dance in front of Vimes' eyes and reminded him that he needed an idea, and fast. Maybe he could get his foot between them and kick him away? He considered it for a moment, but Vetinari's body didn't exactly look like it could take the force. On the other hand, Vimes' body couldn't take the lack of oxygen much longer. So kicking seemed to be a good idea and Sam didn't understand his own refusal to do it. Whatever world the other man was living in right now, he clearly had his mind set on 'killing'.

In one last, desperate attempt to save his existence, Vimes tore at the strangling hand with everything he had and suddenly the grip relaxed and Vetinari took a step backwards, nearly stumbling. He stared at Vimes through wide eyes, an expression on his pale face Sam had never seen before. Vetinari looked confused, shocked, and definitely back to reality.

"What," Sam finally gasped, "the Hell!"

The patrician took another step backwards, one hand pressed against his face. His breath came in short gasps. He looked sick and Vimes felt a wave of unwanted pity rush over him. For a minute neither of them moved. The Vetinari suddenly straightened, his expression blank.

"I apologize for that", he said, his voice just the slightest bit hoarse. "It seems I wasn't quite awake when you entered. Was there anything you wanted?"

Sam's brain stuttered a little in its attempt to keep up with the conversation.

"Did you notice you just tried to murder me?"

"As I said, that hadn't been my intention. But surely that was not the reason you came."

It wasn't. And Vimes realised that he had no idea why he came here in the first place.

"Go to bed," he suddenly ordered, because he could think of nothing else. "You very obviously need it." It was the wrong tone to use.

Vetinari didn't glare at him – a man like him didn't _need_ to glare. His gaze was calm, almost gentle, as was his voice when he spoke. "You just complained about me trying to murder you," he said. "Do you want me to try again?"

No, Sam did not. And he knew that this battle was lost. Vetinari needed sleep. He would probably go totally nuts and kill everyone around if he didn't get it, but arguing had no sense here. Sam knew him too well not to see that. He wanted to know what that guy had been seeing when he attacked him but knew better than to ask.

"If there is nothing else…" Vetinari sounded perfectly normal as he stepped over to the desk and sat down on the chair again, as if nothing ever happened. "I have work to do," he explained. "Don't let me detain you."

-tbc-

March 13, 2006


	6. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Vimes spend the rest of the night trying to get some sleep. To be exact, he spent the rest of the night turning over and over in his bed until he fell out and gave up. When he slumped to the kitchen, he was grumpy and tired and if there was some sort of poetic justice in that, he couldn't find it.

Albert wasn't up yet. Sam wasn't exactly surprised. No one should be up right now, not him, not Albert and definitely not Vetinari. Nothing he could do about that, though – it wasn't like he could force that man to go to bed, and he would have tried, had he not known an action such as that would have resulted in his own quick but painful and rather final death.

He found bread and eggs and ate without appetite.

Somehow, he felt like failing. It was silly – he was dead and had no obligations anymore, and he definitely wasn't Vetinari's keeper, but still he felt like it was his job to protect the man.

Maybe he should just knock him out before he could die of exhaustion. Except the patrician was still faster than Vimes and would be probably be until the moment he dropped dead.

Well, Sam could wait that long. It wasn't like he had anything better to do.

During the past week, complaining about Vetinari had been his favourite pastime. Worrying about Vetinari definitely was not. Snorting to himself, Sam abandoned the remains of his meal and wandered through the large house in a desperate attempt to find something to distract himself with. When by accident he found the library, he considered calling for Sybil's book again, to see if she was still alive now, but decided against this. If Death was right and they could save the world by making sure the war had never happened, it was useless anyway and just a way to risk getting even more upset.

Eventually his steps lead him out of the house and into the garden – the endless, black garden that reminded him once again that this was not where he belonged and not where he wanted to be. There was a stable nearby, where Death's horse would be had it been present. It wasn't often, lately.

Trying to clear his head of all thoughts, Vimes stared out into the cornfields that seemed to go on forever.

---

Five minutes later, Vimes was running in circles around the house. He hadn't had any physic exercise in a week – no burglars to chase, no assassination attempts to escape from, just his

former boss trying to strangle him and that didn't exactly count. He needed to move around a bit.

---

Ten minutes later he gave up. The outer dimensions of the house had nothing to do with the inner dimensions and it was creeping him out.

Besides, running around for no reason at all seemed silly and too much like something rich people did when they had nothing else to do. They called it 'jogging'. Running as a means in itself – it was pathetic. In Sam's world, running only made sense when he was chasing someone or someone was chasing him.

---

Another ten minutes later, Sam finished inspecting the garden because it was creeping him out as well. Sybil probably would have found something nice to say about it. Lovely shades of black, these flowers, and how well they went along with the black house and the black grass. And such a nice contrast to the golden corn.

---

Thirty minutes after that, Sam was walking up a path in the fields and well away from the house. The mountains in the distance remained stubbornly distant. They seemed somewhat fake, like a whole lot of nothing _pretending_ to be mountains in the distance. Even the distance itself seemed fake. Sam stubbornly looked at his waking feet and tried to think of nothing.

---

Eventually Sam accepted that he was a – albeit dead – rich man with nothing else to do and began to run. He didn't jog but actually ran, vigorously, like he had to break a speed record on the way "Halfway to the Mountains – Back to the House". Death probably never had seen anyone going to his mansion in such a hurry. He never would either, because he wasn't here, but had he been he could have seen it, theoretically.

And probably seen it as the proof that humans were indeed very stupid.

Yet it had the desired effect: Sam had been still tired, but unable to sleep. By the time he reached the house, out of breath and with a spinning head, he was unable to think another thought and would probably be able to fall asleep immediately should he want to.

Which he did.

---

Five minutes later, he was in his bed, fast asleep.

---

Vetinari watched Vimes run through the cornfields through one of the windows and was just awake enough to find it disconcerting that he wasn't awake enough anymore to see any sense in the other man's actions.

He'd been in the library to get some more books and found himself wandering aimlessly through the mansion some while later. Needed to move a little. If he sat down now, he might fall asleep – not a good idea.

Klatchinan coffee _would_ be a good idea right now. An entire pot, or better a bathtub full of that stuff…

He was thinking nonsense again. At least it was harmless nonsense, but nonsense none the less. Lord Vetinari wasn't a friend of nonsense.

Needed something to do. Badly.

Needed, right now, to stop thinking in incomplete sentences. This really was becoming quite unacceptable.

His hands were trembling.

Eventually, he made his way to the kitchen.

Entering the small room he stopped dead in the doorway, closed his eyes and waited until his heart stopped racing. He had not expected to find someone else inside and his first reaction to the sight had been the urge to run, struggling with the urge to attack. This wasn't good at all. He needed to clear his head, and if it stopped aching in the process, well, that would be a welcome bonus.

There was something profoundly unfair about the fact that he could be dead and still feel this miserable. Wasn't death supposed to put an end to all suffering? He was sure that was written somewhere. He'd look it up, find out who wrote it and then, if he got the chance, would pay a visit to that person. A very informal one.

Albert kept frying undefinable black and brown bits without noticing him or the fate he hadn't met. Vetinari was well aware that in his exhaustion his mind didn't always live in the same reality his body did, but that knowledge didn't mean he could do anything about it.

Albert turned and grumbled something that was either a greeting or an attempt to show him his teeth had been glued together. Vetinari thought he said something in return but wasn't sure, one second later, if he really had.

Declining the old man's offer of food, he got himself a glass of water, trying to control his shaking hands. This was really quite undignified.

The glass was dirty and the water had the colour of rust. It tasted like… like…

The glass shattered on the floor.

---

To say Albert was slightly surprised to see his guest topple over and fall to his knees to throw up all over the kitchen floor would have been slightly understating the measure of his feelings. Since he couldn't yet figure out what to do about this, the old man remained standing beside the stove, the ladle he'd been using still held in one hand, and watched.

This was the first time he saw this one entering his kitchen in days, and he had to start his visit by behaving badly, Albert's brain observed, unwilling to wait for his mind still limping two steps behind. He knew why he preferred Vimes.

Though it was fascinating to see that the man was able to throw up with absolutely nothing in his stomach.

When Albert's mind and brain finally joined forces, though, he realised the black-clad man was spiting blood all over the tiles. A part of Albert's mind split up from the rest and observed that a bit of blood was not entirely unfitting in the house of Death, but the rest wished it simply wouldn't happen. He needed to stop this somehow – if that guy was planning to die, he should at least wait until Death was back. Death would know what to do in situations such as this. Naturally.

The fact remained that someone needed to do something to help, and currently Albert was the only one present. It wasn't fair – he'd never signed up for stuff like this.

It didn't even take long; less than a minute after Vetinari had fallen to his knees, he stopped coughing and fell over, landing in his own blood. Albert still stayed away safely, the vague idea that he should move over there and see if the man had managed to leave the remains of his life behind without his master's help having no effect on the muscles in his legs. There was no point in moving, he justified his lack of action, since there was nothing he could think of doing.

And because, to be perfectly honest, he was scared of touching the guy. He never quite knew what to make of him. Vimes was fine. Vimes was uncomplicated and easy to get along with, but with Vetinari, Albert wasn't entirely sure he wouldn't get his hand cut off if he touched him. Yes, even now. There was something about him that reminded Albert of Death, and not just of its antrophomorphical personification.

Maybe he should just run and get Vimes. Judging by the amount of time the undead Duke spent complaining about the undead Patrician, he was used to dealing with his boss. He could handle this. Yes. Albert's mind and Albert's brain agreed that this was a good idea.

Albert's body turned around to leave the kitchen, the ladle still in his hand, and collided with a black cloak filling the doorway. He yelped. And yelped again when he made contact with the hard bones hidden by the cloak, that were moving beneath the fabric and pushing him out of the way.

---

Sam didn't know how long he'd slept; in his dream it felt like forever. In his dream, he had been at home, having dinner with his wife, and he knew, as dreamers do, that this was before their son was born. She was telling him about something he couldn't remember, and then Carrot was standing in the room, saying that Nobby was on fire and he needed a pillow to safe him. To dream-Sam it had made perfect sense, so he'd run up the stairs to get a pillow and ended up in the streets of Ankh-Morpork, and they were burning.

The flames were red, as was the sky and the moon, and even the heat as it reached for Sam and lit up his clothes. This would have been a good moment for the dream to end – appropriately, if it insisted, with a scream upon waking. Sam knew he was dreaming, but helpless to stop it as dream mingled with memory, just as he was helpless to stop the spear that was flying towards him.

Only this time it didn't happen quickly. Sam felt the blade enter his body, felt his life escape through the wound, but his body never saw this as an invitation to drop dead. Instead he stood there, looking at them man who'd killed him. The man was looking back. It was Vetinari.

Sam wasn't even surprised.

Time stopped there. Sam wanted to do something, to move, to see the end of this, but he couldn't escape this moment, between life and death, and in his dream he knew he had to, to find out what happened next. It was important.

Just when he was getting there, when he had _willed_ the world to move on, he woke up. There was no scream, not even a startled gasp, just a feeling of regret concerning a missed chance. Sam simply opened his eyes and was awake.

The darkness inside his room was moving. The shadows formed into a shape, came closer, and turned into Death. Now Vimes did gasp, after all. No one liked to wake up to find the grim reaper standing beside their bed.

At least, the reaper wasn't carrying his scythe, which Vimes took as a good sign. Instead, Death carried something that looked like a corpse, and turned out to be Havelock Vetinari when Death placed him on the bed besides him.

"What the heck?" Vimes asked, unable to think of anything else. "You could at least ask!"

OH. Death had the decency to sound embarrassed – however he managed that with that voice of his. I HAD FORGOTTEN THIS BED WAS TAKEN. He seemed not inclined to remove the motionless patrician, though, but turned around and walked away. Apparently, he was in a hurry.

"Wait!" Vimes called after him while looking at Vetinari's white face. "What's wrong with him? He's not dead, is he?" It was disconcerting seeing the patrician like this, and reminded Vimes of the time Vetinari had been poisoned. Only now he looked worse.

NO, Death assured him. I WOULD KNOW.

"Are you sure?"

It was a stupid question to ask, Vimes had to admit that. It lead to him finding out that Death was able to give _that_ look without having any actual eyes.

HE NEEDS TO SLEEP, the skeleton helpfully explained. AS DO YOU. SOON I WILL NEED YOU. And with those words and a whisper of this black cloak in the dark, Death was gone.

Ten seconds later, he poked his head in again. GOOD NIGHT, he said politely and closed the door.

- tbc

May 13, 2009


	7. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Sir Samuel Vimes, Duke of Ankh, ruler of the small but powerful kingdom of Nightwatch and late husband of Lady Sybil Deidre Olgivanna Ramkin, had thought that the weirdest thing that could possibly happen to him had already happened. It was a justified assumption, he felt, as his life was already over and shouldn't be able to offer any further surprises.

Since he had died, he'd already been proven wrong in that regard a number of times. Coming here had been weird. Meeting Death had been weird, and this house was pretty high on the list of weird things that ever happened to _anyone_. But even seeing his own dead body, and living with the grim reaper (in a very wide scaled definition of 'grim' and 'living'), and finding out that every single person's life found room between the covers of a book somewhat paled in the face of being in bed with Havelock, Lord Vetinari.

The very idea would have been enough to make him doubt his sanity any other day. No, scratch that – it would have been enough to make him doubt the sanity of the person who'd suggested it, because that certainly wouldn't have been him. Sybil perhaps, who had funny ideas like that from time to time. And Sam wouldn't have flipped out, like he currently considered doing, no, he would have snorted. Because it was so far out of the realm of the possible that it wouldn't even have been worth a proper laugh.

Now it had been, without warning, catapulted straight into the real world, Vimes felt lost, disoriented, and generally like reality was cheating on him. Fine, a house that was bigger on the inside, used blackness as illumination and made it _work_, and was surrounded by painted mountains and paths that led nowhere only accounted for a certain value of 'reality'. Still, it was cheating. Whatever it was.

Since his mind couldn't figure out an appropriate reaction, Sam's body took over from him, and five seconds after the door had closed after Death, he fell backwards with a squeak – albeit a quiet one, least Vetinari might wake up, and that would make it _worse_.

But the patrician didn't stir – not even when Vimes bumped his head against the wall and let out a sharp – but quiet – curse. He didn't look like he would ever stir again, actually. Vimes thought that he looked dead and was reminded that their shared situation, very urgently, required a new vocabulary.

No black-paged dictionary miraculously materialized out of thin air. Instead, Sam at the same moment noticed that the bed wasn't all _that_ wide, remembered what he had read in Vetinari's life-book and wondered why the man had ended lying half on top of him if the house could, apparently, have as many bedrooms as it wanted to.

"What the hell even happened?" he asked the room in general and the furniture in particular. No answer was forthcoming – the only reaction was Vetinari moving slightly, causing Sam to yelp again and nearly fall through the wall.

He didn't get far – partly because the wall proved more solid than his stomach believed in one second of uncertainty, and partly because Vetinari had taken hold of his shirt and seemed not inclined to let go.

He also didn't seem inclined to wake up anytime soon, though Vimes was still certain that the patrician's reflexes were still working well enough to kill him on instinct, should he try to move away. Or touch him, which was making moving or even staying still in this cramped space increasingly difficult. Or breathing. Trapped somewhere between being confused, sympathetic and seriously crept out, Vimes cursed the fact that despite being dead breathing was still a necessity.

Or perhaps he just breathed because he_ believed_ he had to. There was an idea. With sleep interrupted and out of reach, he was desperate enough to try.

On the upside, he nearly managed to suffocate himself into unconsciousness.

-

The next morning never came. Vimes, having been torn from sleep after far too short a time, kept staring into the darkness around him, waiting for it to get brighter as the night finally ended and offered an excuse to get out of bed. It was testament to the fact that he really, really _needed_ sleep – his thoughts had fallen back into the world he was used to, ignoring that in this place there was no night and thus no morning to come – and that the room had no windows.

That eventually he _did _fall asleep, he only noticed for the fact that once his drifting thoughts returned to reality, reality wasn't one hundred percent as he remembered it.

For example, he was warmer than he had been before. And the blanket seemed heavier than before. And, on a side note, Havelock Vetinari was using him as a pillow.

For a few minutes, Sam was laying very, very still, wondering what he could do to wake up properly and restore reality to its traditional setting. It had to be something that didn't involve moving, as moving might wake Vetinari and maybe then, with two of them to acknowledge the situation, reality might be strained beyond what it could bear and shatter around them, or worse get stuck the way it was now.

Eventually, Sam noticed that even while he stayed still as a stone, Vetinari wasn't. It took him a while to realise, for there wasn't much movement to speak of after all. The man was trembling, softly, and every once in a while he would jerk slightly and tighten his hand in Sam's shirt. Daring to open his eyes, Sam gazed down at him in the disturbingly transparent darkness.

Vetinari's face was twisted in something resembling pain, pale and covered in sweat. He appeared to be having a nightmare, and Sam really couldn't say this surprised him. It disturbed him, though – someone like Vetinari didn't have nightmares, because someone like Vetinari had no emotions and wasn't entirely human. Despite everything, Vimes still clung to that belief. The world was much simpler that way.

Burying his face in Sam's shirt, Vetinari whimpered ever so softly, and that belief went out of the window.

Okay, so he was having a nightmare. That was hardly surprising, and really no reason for Vimes to jerk in shock and then freeze in an uncomfortable position that defied gravity, as if Vetinari was going to wake up and kill him the moment he moved. It wasn't even like the late patrician was displaying a particularly violent behaviour right now – in fact, he was hardly moving, or making any noise at all. Very much unlike Sam's son, Sam, who also had nightmares from time to time, and always made sure that the entire world knew.

So, Vetinari was the proof that one could well suffer with dignity. Not that it was very hard to show more dignity than a sleeping one year old living among dragons and Willikins the butler.

It was still a disturbing situation, particularly because it made Vimes feel more sympathy than he had to spare, and the need to do something about it, that might have been born from a lifetime as a policeman (but was more likely a product of living with Sybil).

So the logical step would be to wake Vetinari up – but Sam couldn't ignore the memory that the last time he'd tried that, he'd nearly ended up dead once more. (He began to wonder if there were layers to that state.)

Admittedly, his little son had shown some murderous tendencies too from time to time, but there was a certain difference in height and strength that made his attempts cute and pitiful, as opposed to, for example, creepy and fatal.

Still, even more creepy than that was the idea of calming Vetinari down like he'd calm his child (by taking him in his arms and making soothing noises) and having parts of his body nailed to parts of the furniture in gratitude.

Something had to be done though, because like this Vimes couldn't get back to sleep, he couldn't get up and he couldn't scratch the itch he knew would start somewhere on his body as soon as the realization that both his arms were trapped by either Vetinari's body or between his own and the wall had reached the soles of his feet. He was, in one word, stuck.

So in the end he used the part of his right arm that was not trapped to – very carefully – rub the patrician's back and hope that it worked.

Surprisingly enough, it did.

-

Time had no meaning in this place, so hurry was useless – at least in theory. Death had no feelings, so impatience was not a problem of his – in theory. The end of the world had already begun, so there would have been no worst case scenario to prevent even if the first had not applied. In theory.

Death was feeling uneasy and impatient, because they were running out of time to prevent the worst from happening. It wasn't actually true, but he felt like it was, and blamed it on the connection his realm had to the collapsing world of the living. There was a sense of doom hanging even over this place.

Also, Death was in a bad mood. Being not used to feelings, he found that he quite liked it, which confused him. (He had too little experience with emotions to know that this was not necessarily a contradiction.)

Recently, he had visited a number of gods on the occasion of their ceasing to exist. Gods, like kings, deserved his personal attention, even though he found them annoyingly arrogant. Somehow it seemed inappropriate for them to look down on him, the common little anthropomorphic personification, when he was still very secure in his existence while theirs had just ended. It had to have something to do with most of them having been created from human beliefs and inherited a lot of human traits.

Death sighed, like wind humming through an open grave. He liked troll gods. Troll gods were uncomplicated, and usually too solid to speak.

Dealing with gods was never very pleasant. Usually, however, Death didn't have to do it a lot, because gods, dependant as they were on the fleeting fancies of their followers, were very resilient and only died rarely – and if they did, they first degenerated into a form more likely to be dealt with by the Death of Rats. (Not that Death would let his little helper do these jobs. That would have been impolite.) These days, however, many of the gods and demons of the Disc were erased because all of their believers had died. It were the ones with a small following that went first, but the sheer number of gods showed just _how many_ gods had so far survived with no more than one family of worshippers, usually resident in Ankh-Morpork.

And their sudden demise made sure that the gods died quickly, without a slow fading, in all their godly glory and indignation.

In other words, Death was pissed. Not the "I'll bring down the house with an axe" kind of pissed (that would be I'LL BRING DOWN THE WORLD WITH MY SCYTHE kind of pissed in his case, really), but mildly annoyed and not in the mood for delays.

THEY ARE LATE, his voice rolled through the house, making the walls shake in sympathy with his state of mind.

"Did you even invite them?" the young man sitting at the long table asked. He shifted uncomfortably. Time had no meaning here, and thus he felt thoroughly out of place, and the invisible scowl Death send in his direction obviously didn't help.

Then Death stopped to think. He was an anthropomorphical personification and therefore it was not expected of him to say things clearly. The word 'ominous' would have been written in his DNA if he had any, and beside that, he was Death. The End. Usually his very presence left no room for misinterpretations.

…NO, he said.

"I believe you have been waiting for us," a voice sounded from the doorway. Death looked up to see the two humans enter, neither of them looking as if he was death or dying as far as he could tell. "I apologize for the delay."

Something about the voice confused Death. It sounded perfectly polite, and he wasn't trained enough in dealing with the nuances to understand why it still felt like it wasn't.

"Who's that?" the other human, the one called Samuel Vimes asked and pointed at the table. The young man sitting there stood to greet them.

"My name is Lobsang Ludd," he introduced himself. "I'm-"

"-an unusually talented member of the thief's guild who disappeared a couple of years ago," Vimes finished for him.

"You also happen to be the son on time herself and her heir, which makes you an anthropomorphic personification, even though you grew up as a human – which I believe to be related to your reason for being here," Vetinari added, which earned him a surprised look from everyone in the room able to experience proper surprise.

"You're what now?" asked Vimes.

-

Sam understood little of the following explanation. It was something mysterious that made a lot of sense if one was into that sort of thing. He understood that much and it was enough for him. Still, he eyed the boy Death had apparently invited here with a healthy dose of suspicion. No one who came when Death called could be trusted.

That Vetinari knew who he was didn't surprise Sam at all. It was Vetinari. He knew things. That was his job. And in the last few days he had done a lot of reading.

And if he had skipped a bit of reading and done a bit more sleeping, he might have spared Sam a very embarrassing night. At least he had the decency to be gone when Vimes came fully awake in the metaphorical morning and spare him an equally embarrassing day.

Lobsang, despite being a mystic something or other, wore that expression often seen on the faces of people who talked to the patrician for the first time. Vimes felt inappropriately smug about that.

The young man caught himself quickly, however. He looked at Vimes.

"The surviving Ankh-Morprokians would be relieved to know you're still, in a sense, here. Especially the members of the watch were suffering from a notable decline in motivation after learning of your demise."

"They found my body, then." In the chaos and the flames, Sam hadn't been sure about that.

"The enemy did, actually. Sorry about that. They buried you separately."

Sam frowned. "You mean, separate from all the others?" he asked without much hope.

"I mean in parts."

There was a moment of silence.

"Well," Sam eventually said. "It's a family tradition." It probably shouldn't have shocked him. After all, he'd always thought it wouldn't matter to him what happened to his body after he died. Of course, then he'd never thought he'd ever learn about it.

"As for you, Sir," Lobsang turned to Vetinari. "I'm afraid they never quite found out what happened to you."

"I died," Vetinari friendly informed him.

"Yes, thank you, I figured as much."

"As I take it, you are to help us with the solving of the problem of impending worldwide destruction." Vetinari sat on one of the chairs and watched Lobsang intently over folded hands. "How exactly is that going to happen?"

"And when?" added Vimes, who preferred to stand even as Lobsang returned to his seat. "We've been waiting for ages." His patience was running out. During Death's prolonged absence, Vimes had tried to console himself with the knowledge – if not understanding – that time did not really pass in this place. But regardless of the place it passed for _him_, and he wanted to do something. Sitting around waiting had never sat well with him, especially if there was something threatening his family and he had the opportunity to crush it under his heel.

ALL PREPARATIONS HAVE BEEN MADE, Death kindly informed them with a voice that for once not only gaped but echoed. YOU CAN START AS SOON AS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TO DO.

Vimes quite liked the sound of that.

-tbc

June 06, 2009


	8. Chapter 7

Death couldn't come with them. He was forbidden to interfere directly in the fate of the world. Actually, he was forbidden to interfere in any way at all, but since someone else had broken the rules first, he apparently deemed it okay to have someone else interfere in his place.

Also, they were still around despite being dead. To Sam Vimes that was all the proof he needed that the world wanted to be saved by them.

Not that he cared very much for what the world wanted. What Sam Vimes wanted was much more important. And right now Sam Vimes wanted to know where Havelock Vetinari was. So they could finally leave this weird place and get back to life, and also a little bit because he wanted to make sure at least one of them knew what exactly was going on. Anthropomorphic personifications of any type sometimes lacked a little in the rhetorical department.

There was nothing they could take with them, that much Sam had understood. Technically, they could have left right away, but Death and Lobsang had to prepare their departure, and in the meantime Vetinari had shuffled off to do whatever he did when there was nothing to do.

Now the moment of truth was approaching, Sam was getting a little nervous. He wasn't worried that they could fail, though, because there was so much at stake than a failure was simply not a possibility.

Eventually he ended up in the library. He hadn't been looking for it and was rather certain it hadn't been in this place yesterday, but it seemed at promising location for his search. Vetinari had done a lot of reading lately. Perhaps he wanted to make use of the last opportunity to read other people's life books before life separated him from this place, if possible forever.

They would return to life. They would un-destroy the world. The thought wasn't as shocking as it should be, as Sam had never quite gotten the hang of being dead in the first place.

As he found out, Vetinari wasn't here. At least not in immediate sight. Sam considered calling for him, but suddenly feared that the library would take that as an invitation to throw the bloody book at him again, and then, suddenly, Vetinari _would_ appear, and kill him. It would reduce the chances of the city being saved, but for the patrician that probably would be worth it.

He could, however… No. It was a stupid idea. He shouldn't even consider it, as there was no point in knowing. Even if he made sure that his wife and son were still alive, it didn't matter. Soon, the history that might have led to their death would be erased, so even if he looked and found they hadn't made it, it wouldn't matter. It would simply make him go crazy and cloud his thinking.

But all this turning back time business was abstract and hard to grasp. Vimes needed something substantial to hold on to. And looking at the books to see them writing themselves, see the words form on the paper as a proof that there still was a life to be written about would be substantial enough for him. It wasn't like he was going to spy on them. He didn't _want _to know what was happening to them right now, since judging from Lobsang's stories, what he'd read might disturb him. All he wanted was a sign that they still lived, as meaningless as that life might be at the moment.

Being alive was something he understood.

So he called for the book of his son, and he flipped through the pages until he found the last page filled with text. A neat handwriting, curling over the paper. Documenting facts.

Sam stared at the page.

This was like writing in stone. What these words described had happened, was unchangeable. But they were about the change it. Did that mean the writing on the last couple of pages would be erased? Or just crossed out and worked over? Or would there be two stories in these books?

Sam stared at the page.

Did it work the other way round? If he changed something in the book, would that change reality? If he tore out a page, would it undo all written down there?

Sam stared at the page. The writing didn't move on. The story was over.

'_This never happened,'_ he told himself. _'It will never have happened. And I will not look to see what exactly it is that never happened.'_

His eyes, treacherously, moved to the beginning of the final page. He told them to stop, but they ignored his orders, as did his heart that seemed to have stopped beating. For the first time ever he truly felt dead.

His eyes flew over words his brain didn't want to register, and then the book was gone and Sam was staring at his hands, frozen in air before him. Extensions of his body he had no use for.

The book was still there, but somehow it had moved through the room from his hands into those of Lord Vetinari, who flipped through it with detached interest.

"Put that down!" Vimes growled through grinded teeth. "That's none of your damn business!" Finding something to focus his anger on without having to think, he lunged for the patrician, blindly and without grace. He knew it was useless, but somehow protecting this book felt like protecting his son, and his brain had gone somewhere else to kill time, unwilling to deal with any of this.

Vetinari sidestepped his uncoordinated attack without trouble, his eyes fixed on this book. Under different circumstances, Sam would have felt like a fly being swatted aside by a careless gesture.

"Interesting," Vetinari said. Breathing hard with unsuppressed anger and very suppressed everything else, Sam clenched his fists and kept himself from lunging at him again.

"What's so interesting?" he hissed, wishing for a sword or something else to cause serious damage. Vetinari remained unimpressed by his mood. Distantly, Sam realised that he wasn't reading at all, just randomly flipping through the pages.

"This is a very thick book. I would think it is meant to contain the story of a very long life." He put the leather-bound volume down on a table, but Sam noticed that he remained between him and the book. "You should consider yourself lucky. If we set things right, your son certainly will outlive you by many years."

Vimes stared at him. Then he tried to stare at the book, but it was gone from his view due to Vetinari standing in his line of sight. Moving didn't present itself as a desirable option, so Vimes stared at Vetinari again without seeing him, and gave his higher brain functions a cameo in the story of his life.

Then he smiled.

Then he grinned.

Finally he laughed out loud. It was half-faked, half-forced, but it felt good none the less and he laughed too loud and too long as the tension left him. He didn't need to know. There was nothing to know. What was written in this book was nothing compared to what could be written in it someday. It felt like a lie, but he decided to believe in it.

When Vetinari moved to leave the library, the book was gone from the table.

-

While Death and Lobsang had to deal with setting up the right circumstances for their journey back in time, there wasn't very much for the two normal, mortal humans (Vimes used this expression somewhat cautiously in connection to Vetinari) to do. They couldn't take anything with them but the clothes they were wearing, which didn't make a lot of sense to Sam: Either they could take anything, or nothing. Insisting on an explanation, Lobsang had told him something about a force called The Narrative, which was at work in cases like this. Had they been women, he said, the clothes would have to be left behind as well. Apparently the narrative was perverted.

But at least it left them their dignity.

THERE IS NO REASON TO FEEL WORRY, Death said in a voice that was either meant to be reassuring or to imitate the sound of nails being hammered into a coffin. THE CARRYING OF WEAPONS OR TOOLS WOULD NOT RAISE YOUR CHANCES TO SUCCEED IN THE LEAST.

Vimes thought about this. Hard. "Was this supposed to make me feel better?" he eventually asked, because he honestly couldn't tell.

YES. DID IT NOT WORK?

"Not exactly. Sorry."

HUMAN EMOTIONS ARE COMPLEX, was all Death had to say about it, but there was something consternated about the way he walked away.

"He does attempt to understand the living, though the reason for it escapes me," Vetinari mused, and Sam decided to pretend he had been there all along and not apparently popped up out of nothing. "After all, his interaction with living beings is limited at best."

"Maybe it's a hobby," Sam suggested. "Like the garden, or the house. It's like he's trying to imitate humanity and doing it wrong."

"Starting with the name of his horse." Vetinari nodded. Sam refrained from a reply – it was true that the name Binky (Or BINKY, to quote Death) was ill chosen for a horse that was supposed to inspire fear in the hearts of men, dwarfs, tigers and any other creature on the Disk simply due to who it was carrying, but he felt that as someone who had a similar effect on people and had called his dog Wuffles, Vetinari was hardly in a position to complain.

"I think they're ready," the patrician said, looking over to the two more or less supernatural beings standing at the edge of Death's realm. There was no better word to describe it. They had walked away from the house as far as they could, up the path and beyond the golden cornfield. Where before there had been the fake horizon, like a theatre screen with mountains painted on it there now was mainly nothing. Just darkness, with swirling shadows inside, like things trying to take from and failing just before they became recognizable. As far as Sam had understood their upcoming task, they were expected to walk into that.

Just him and Vetrinari. Death couldn't come, due to some rules and the general fabric of reality. Sam didn't care so much for the reasons. All he was concerned about, right now, was that there was a black, terrible abyss and they were supposed to jump in. To a place where even Death wouldn't go.

If he had been a little more alive, the latter fact might have actually been reassuring. Then again, probably not. There just was something about black holes in reality full of terrible things that didn't appeal to his animalistic instincts.

But if he thought of the book he had held in his hands less than an hour ago, he knew there was nowhere he wouldn't go, and couldn't start soon enough.

"Let's go then," he said, walking over to Death with determination. "So, we'll just go through this and end up in Anth-Morpork?"

Death nodded. YOU WILL ARRIVE THREE DAYS BEFORE YOUR DEMISE.

"And then what?"

YOU WILL KNOW WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU SEE IT.

That wasn't at all helpful. Vimes suspected that Death couldn't tell more, because even he didn't exactly know what they were about to face.

WE HAVE DETERMINED THIS THE RIGH TIME FOR ACTION. FOCUS ON THE TASK AND DO NOT TRY TO CHANGE ANYTHING THAT HAPPENED IN YOUR PAST. SINCE YOUR PRESENT SELFS DO NOT EXIST IN THAT TIME IT WILL HAVE NO EFFECT.

"I thought changing the past was the idea?"

WHAT YOU HAVE TO ERADICATE DOES NOT EXIST IN THAT TIME EITHER.

"You're saying that someone else changed history first?"

IN A MANNER OF SPEAKING.

Raising his eyebrows, Sam turned to look at Vetinari. "Now look at that."

"You're still fighting crimes in the afterlife," the other man said with a faint smile. "You should have taken the chance for retirement when it was offered to you. It seems that opportunity is gone forever."

In reply, Sam merely shrugged. He wasn't particularly unhappy about that. Just sometimes, he wished the criminals of the city would give him a break long enough to have tea with Sybil after reading to their son. It was all he asked of retirement.

Maybe he'd get it. One day. Some part of him was convinced that he had protected the city for so long that once he became too old and tired to run after every murderer, there would be fewer murderers to run after.

Beside him Vetinari was still smiling. At times like this, Sam was more convinced than ever that the man was reading his mind.

YOU CAN GO, Death said. It didn't sound pointed; probably because he didn't know the meaning of that word. Still, Sam felt like they were in the process of getting kicked out.

Which was perfectly fine with him. Getting kicked out by Death – was there a better way to start the day?

Only the look of the door wasn't to his liking. Looking at the swirling, back wall-that-wasn't, Sam swallowed once and stepped forward.

By the time the darkness closed around him and ate the world, Vetinari was already gone.

-tbc

July 01, 2009


	9. Chapter 8

Contrary to Vimes' expectation, there was no darkness waiting for him in the dark. In fact, there was nothing, which was, he realised after a second, not exactly true. What surrounded him was that absence of everything. It wasn't, he found, an environment that made him feel good.

There was him, or at least his thoughts. The idea that he might be stuck here for the rest of eternity – a concept that was disturbingly easy to grasp in his current situation – didn't have time to manifest in his brain before the nothing disappeared, but it had been ready to enter his awareness, and he felt its cold hand on the doorknob of his mind even after said mind had become occupied with less abstract and more urgent matters.

Like pain, for example.

It started slowly, more the memory of pain than the actual sensation. After a second, he realised that he had indeed felt this pain before: it was the pain on the spear entering his chest and killing him, almost instantly.

Only this time it wasn't instantly. It happened slowly, as if the blade entered his body centimetre by centimetre. And every centimetre _hurt_.

Gasping in pain, Vimes looked down and saw nothing. No weapon, no blood. His black shirt didn't stick to his chest.

But he _felt_ it. Felt it killing him, again. Feeling more confusion than anything else, Sam fell to his knees, and for the first time noticed his surroundings.

He was back in the city. And the city looked precisely as it had the last time he'd seen it: Destroyed, burning, and tinted in a deep red that spoke of doom.

"This is the wrong time," he gasped, not really believing that anyone would hear him. He took another step forward and bit his lips when the pain intensified.

Another step, more pain. It was as if he was walking straight into the blade, impaling himself on in. Sam stopped, to catch his breath, but the pain didn't lessen. It didn't intensify either – like him, it had paused.

The flames burned less brightly now. The red veil over the world was thinning.

And Sam knew, out of nowhere, that the pain would leave him if he went back, but that if he did so, he could never turn around again and their mission would fail before it even started. In the direction he had to go, every step could be taken only once.

There was no way of telling how much further he had to go, only that he had to do it. Had to walk into his death again, only this time actively and slowly, as opposed to sudden and almost painless. Sam wasn't quite sure he had signed up for this. Maybe he should be mad at Death and the time-guy for not mentioning this part of their mission – not that it would have changed his decision to come, but it would have been nice to be prepared. Or not. Sam couldn't say if it would have been better to have known, but he'd get angry anyway, he decided. Once he was through with this and no longer distracted by excoriating agony.

Since there was no way to avoid this, Sam though he might as well just throw himself in. After all, the quicker he walked, the quicker it would be over, right? It sounded like a reasonable plan, and so he steeled his resolve and started running.

He managed all of two steps before the piercing pain forced him to his knees with a yelp. Damn it, he could practically feel the freaking blade enter his heart!

Except that his heart didn't stop, and for all his suffering, he didn't really feel like he was dying. Pity, that.

The city looked almost normal again. Hardly any damage, hardly any fire, hardly and redness. Instead it was getting darker. Sam took the most painful breath of his existence so far and stumbled onwards.

The blade went deeper. And killed him. Then it was over.

Breathing hard, Sam opened his eyes and blinked a few times until his vision cleared. He hadn't even realised he'd closed them.

Around him, it was dark. Deep night. It wasn't raining, was the first thing that crossed his mind. The city at night would always be associated with rain for him, as in the memory of his younger years as a too-often drunk member of the nightwatch, it always rained.

It hadn't rained three days ago. It hadn't rained for weeks. This wasn't his memory, or his mind, or his afterlife. This was three days ago, and it was _real_.

And he was alone.

Free of pain and finally able to think clearly, Sam looked around in renewed interest and rising alarm. Vetinari should be with him, shouldn't he? Sam had assumed that they'd both be spit out in the same place, and no one had claimed differently. Certainly Vetinari had assumed the same thing, or he would have approached Vimes as to the coordination of their further actions.

Or would he? It was Vetinari, after all. Chances where that he'd just let him run through the deserted streets uselessly, simply as a source of amusement. After all, their working relationship had worked like that for the better part of twenty years.

Sam shoved the thought aside. There was a time and a place for doing things just to annoy him, and this was neither. Vetrinari wouldn't play games with him if the city, never mind the entire disk, was at stake.

He'd been spit out, for lack of a better word, in once of the less decayed part of the city. Sam identified it by smell – if it didn't stink, there were a lot if placed this could not be.

He'd been here before. Apart from that, this place had no connection to him whatsoever. He hadn't even died here, which was a great relief – him ending up in the exact place of his demise would have indicated that the same happened to Vetinari, and in that case Sam truly had no chance of ever finding him, even by accident.

It was dark around him and darker in the shadows. Sam wondered, briefly, if someone coming this way would see him, and what would happen if he touched them, but the thought remained just that, as he was all alone. Only one window was dimly lit by the light of a single candle. It was very late then. Sam's sense of time confirmed this: closer to dawn than to dusk.

He used to love this time of night, when the city belonged to him alone. Now it seemed eerie, as if there was a thunderstorm lurking somewhere in the cloudless sky. In less than three days, all this would be in flames, the people of the city would be dead or on the run, and yet no one had the slightest idea of what was to come.

Somewhere in this city, right now, was another, younger Sam Vimes who also had no idea. That Sam Vimes was frantically trying to find out what had happened to Lord Vetinari, and it created a strange sort of harmony that the current Sam Vimes was doing pretty much the same.

And so far he was equally unsuccessful. There was nothing but the almost unnaturally empty street to be seen, the stars in the sky not yet obscured by the inevitable morning fog. While Sam looked around, even the single candle in the window was blown out. It was good that he wasn't superstitious, else it would have felt like a bad omen.

And rightly so. In three days these people would be dead. Except they wouldn't, if Vimes and Vetinari had any say in it.

For their mission to succeed, though, Vimes needed to find Vetinari. He became acutely aware just how much he needed the other man, because Sam Vimes honestly had no idea what to do next. Without him he could only run through the streets, hoping he would eventually stumble over some kind of clue.

It had worked surprisingly often in his life.

It occurred to Sam that the upcoming end of the world due to supernatural intervention was not an every day situation, not even for Death. Ergo, he had not done anything like this before. Ergo, he had no idea what would happen to Vimes and Vitinari but had merely guessed. Ergo, anything could have happened and the possibility that Vetinari had somehow been lost on his way here suddenly seemed very real.

It also occurred to Sam that if he had gone through the experience of getting killed, if not necessarily of dying, in that red haze, then Vetinari, most likely, would too. He swallowed. It would explain why the other man had never made it.

After all, Vimes had been blessed with an almost instantaneous death. He'd been gone before he had time to get over his surprise and begin to register the pain. But even that had been terrible to live through again in slow motion. Vetinari on the other hand had been tortured to death, and Vimes didn't even want to imagine how much strength it would cost him to get through it again.

On the other hand, this _was _Havelock Vetinari. If there was anyone who had that strength, it was him.

And in the end, if his path wasn't longer than Sam's, the experience would be mercifully short compared to the first time.

Somehow, this observation did nothing to ease the cold knot in Sam's stomach he refused to acknowledge as pity or even worry. He bit his lips and resumed his search.

The darkness surrounding him, even at this hour, could never be so thick that the shadows couldn't be darker. Even with eyes accustomed to the night, Sam couldn't penetrate them. They were, therefore, the obvious place to look in. He did so, and due to Vetinari's dark clothes and hair, nearly fell over the man before he realised he'd found him.

The patrician was lying on the ground, curled into a tight ball, and didn't move. At first Sam thought he was unconscious, but when he touched his shoulder, Vetinari flinched away from his hand with a sound that might have sounded like a whimper had it escaped the throat of anyone else.

Even the brief contact had been enough to tell Vimes that the other man was shaking. His right hand was clawing at the cobblestone, as if he tried to dig his nails into the ground. At a loss, Vimes took his shoulders in an attempt to shake him out of whatever miserable state he was in.

"I need your help," he hissed, more to himself than anyone else, as he dragged Vetinari's skinny form out of the shadow and into the less consuming darkness of the street, as if that would be of any help. "The entire bloody city needs your help. Because frankly, I have no idea where to go next, or what to fight." In response, Vetinari went limp and passed out.

"That's not helping," Sam mumbled while he tried not to panic. In the pale light that seemed to come from out of nowhere and was only available to those whose eyes had been given the chance to grow accustomed to the dark, he saw the blood running out of Vetinari's mouth, and a fit of panic, for a second, became a very tempting option. Sam had suffered no physical damage from the imaginary killing he'd just been subjected to, but maybe Vetinari's experience had been so terrible that his body had been convinced it was, in fact, damaged and dying, once again.

Sam thought, faintly, that there was a certain irony to the fact that it was his hands that were shaking, while Vetinari's were still and clam and cold when he grasped them. The gesture invoked no response whatsoever from the motionless man. Pressing his lips together, a part of his mind already working through possible actions to be taken in the worst-case scenario, he reached out and felt for the patrician's pulse. Before he could find it, however, the patrician reached out and felt for Vimes' hand. In fact, he found it rather quickly. Finding his wrist suddenly crushed in a vice like grip, Sam gave a startled little sound of relief (and terror).

A second passed. And another one. Vetrinari was looking in his direction, but Sam didn't know if he could see him in this darkness. After all, he hadn't lived all his life in the dark streets, but rather in a semi-dark office, lit by a grand total of one candle.

He could probably see him.

The question that remained was: did he recognize him? For if he didn't, Sam better prepared for another lesson in sudden and unpleasant death.

Eventually, the tension left Vetinari's body and the hold on Sam's wrist relaxed, though the fingers holding him didn't let go completely. Sam felt the other's sigh more than he heard it.

"That has been a most unpleasant experience," the patrician said, his voice even, calm and all business. "I do not care at all to repeat it."

"And I don't care to repeat the experience of you trying to throttle me," Sam agreed, shaking his arm for emphasis. Instead if letting go off him, however, Vetinari used him as leverage to pull himself upright, as if that had been his intention all along.

"You are the man with the plan," Vimes pointed out once they were both standing in the dark street. There was a first hint of dawn in the sky, more an idea yet than a visible brightening. For a strange, irrational second, Sam wondered if the sun only rose every day because they expected it to. "Where do we go now?"

In the cover of darkness, Vetinari rubbed his thin wrists. "Right now, the Agathean ships are closing in on Ankh-Morpork," he explained. "It's an entire fleet, carrying one and a half million soldiers. It can't possibly go unnoticed, and if it doesn't go unnoticed, the city won't be unprepared." Vimes wasn't sure in what way that was an answer to his question.

"What can we possibly do against one and a half million soldiers? We don't have one and a half million _inhabitants_." But the patrician smiled thinly, in a way that made Vimes's hair stand on edge, and didn't answer.

"Besides, as a matter of fact, we didn't notice them, impossible or not," Sam further pointed out, before adding, as an afterthought, "Sir."

"The 'impossible' part of that statement is of much greater significance than you imagine," Vetinari kindly told him. "It's impossible, so we have to make sure it doesn't happen. It is up to us merely to set the world right."

"And it's up to you to give away information I can actually work with." Sam was beginning to get irritated. "Sir."

Even in the weak light he could make out the raised eyebrow. "Is it?"

Sam grinded his teeth. "Do you happen, by any chance, to know where we have to go now, and what to do there? Sir?"

"As a matter of fact, Sir Samuel, I do." With that, Vetinari vanished into the shadow. Cursing under his breath, Sam followed him into the dark and nearly ran into a wall.

-tbc

July 29, 2009


	10. Chapter 9

"I didn't know there was a hatch like this in the wall."

Commander Vimes was whispering, his voice getting progressively quieter when he realised how well it carried in the narrow tunnel. Still the disgruntled tome was impossible to miss. He was, Vetinari imagined, not quite pleased about the fact that there was something in his streets that even after a lifetime of patrolling them he didn't know. A secret tunnel in one of the better parts of Ankh-Morpork – not the place where anyone would suspect such a thing, which was most likely the reason for choosing this location in the first place.

"If it is any consolation, Sir Samuel," the patrician said, not bothering to lower his voice in the last, "the entrance has not been in this place for very long."

"You mean they just dug this tunnel and no one noticed?"

"If you don't try to keep something secret, no one will suspect there is a secret to be kept. You of all people should know this."

"But you noticed, of course." Now the voice sounded sour. Able to imagine the expression that went along with the words, Vetinari smiled briefly in the darkness.

"Quite the contrary, I was only shown it only a couple of weeks before. Really, Commander, there is no reason to whisper. No one will hear us."

Silence answered him. It was hard, he imagined, to overcome the urge to be as quiet as possible while sneaking down a dark, damp stairwell to where the enemy waited. The air was getting cooler with each step down, and soon the stones of the surrounding buildings were replaced by the rough material of much older tunnels.

"Who created these?" Vimes asked, his voice still subdued, though Vetinari no longer had to strain to hear him. "The dwarfs?" By now they were pretty far below the streets.

"No. They are leftovers of the first city."

"Let me rephrase it: Did the dwarfs uncover these tunnels?"

It was pitch black around them, yet Vetinari could make out the barred door to his right, the junction to his left. He walked down the alley with Vimes on his heels, no more than an few inches of air between his head and the bottom on the next higher layer of Ankh-Morpork, as abandoned as this one, long ago.

"The dwarfs don't come here," he said. He suspected death had something to do with the fact that they could see in the darkness, but if it was Death as a person, or simply their personal state of not being alive, he didn't dare to speculate on.

It was very much like the invisible dark in Death's house.

"Mind telling me…" Vimes stopped himself and rephrased the question. "Where are we going?"

Vetinari smiled to himself because Vimes, walking behind him, could not see it. "We are headed to the place where I believe the cause for our current situation is awaiting us."

"Awaiting in the sense that they are there, or in the sense that they know we're coming?" The last time Vetinari had been here, the tunnels had been lit by torchlight, and he had been in a considerable amount of pain. It was not a memory he cared about, but at the moment it was valuable. He took another turn left, down another flight of steps, when Vimes added, "And who are 'they' anyway? Death's explanation didn't make an awful lot of sense to me."

"No," Vetinari agreed in as pleasant a tone he could muster. "It wouldn't."

Vimes growled, and the patrician decided to offer an explanation before he run a risk of dying in these tunnels a second time.

"We are up against beings apparently called the Auditors of Reality, although their name doesn't matter in the least here, as it could be exchanged with any other. If I understand correctly what Death told me, along with the information found in his library, the Auditors do, for one reason or another, have an interest in extinguishing all life on the Disk. Destroying this city was a first step, and by the look of it the only one they had to take, as it greatly reduced the number of antrophomorphical personifications, whose existence is closely interwoven with that of all beings on this world."

"Hold on a second. Why do they want to erase all life?"

Here Vetinari could only speculate. "Because it doesn't follow the rules and brings chaos to a world they would prefer neatly structured."

"But they are destroying the world!"

"A price they appear more than willing to pay," Vetinari said friendly.

"And what do they have to do with the Agatheans?"

"They cannot intervene directly, just as Death could not take direct actions to stop them. The Auditors could only enable the Agathean army to invade the city without anyone noticing in time. The army that is currently on its way here, unseen."

"Ah," said Vimes. "So, these Auditors didn't, by any chance get the idea into the emperor's head that invading us would be a good idea?"

"Why, Sir Samuel, I'm impressed. There might be hope for you yet."

"None for you, if you keep this up," Vimes replied surprisingly bluntly. Vetinari's lips twitched. It had been a long time since anyone dared speak this way with him. It was most amusing. There were benefits to being dead, after all.

"Sir," Vimes added.

"Quite."

"The Auditors enabled the enemy to invade," the watchman continued this thought, "which is only an indirect interference, and Death enabled us to stop them, which is only an indirect interference on his part. So they're all just bending the rules."

"So it would seem, although I have reason to belief, according to my research, that these Auditors _are_ the rules. However, their world is not all that different from ours."

"In that there are rules, or in that no one seems to follow them?"

"That, it seems to me, would fall into your field of expertise, commander."

"How do we stop them?" Vimes returned to the original topic while they slipped through a half opened door and Vetinari tried not to clench his hands into fists at the faint smell in the air and the memories it carried. He concentrated on Vimes' voice instead. "No one can see us, so I guess visiting the watch house and yell 'There's an army sneaking closer!' is out of the question."

"It's much easier than that," Vetinari told him. "Their arrival is clouded by the Auditors' power. So all we have to do is get rid of the Auditors."

-

"I had a feeling you were going to say that." In fact, the usual eighty-nine-numbers scale from one to one hundred (Obviously, since it had been invented by wizards, it was missing all numbers containing an eight, and the number eighty-eight it was missing twice.) wasn't big enough to measure how much Sam had seen this coming.

Having predicted correctly gave him some satisfaction and some dread. More dread than satisfaction, since he didn't expect all-powerful, outworldly beings to be stopped by a 'Halt, or I'll arrest you!'

"Are we going to club them to death?" It seemed to be as good a question to ask as any.

"I doubt such an opportunity will present itself. Besides, they can't exactly be considered alive." Vetinari sounded mildly amused. Vimes suspected the tone was meant to cover the fact that he had no idea what to do himself.

Well, they would just have to come up with something when the time came. They were good at that, at least.

The air had grown constantly cooler. Sam was shivering, which was kind of unfair, as he should by any rights be beyond the point where he could feel cold. He also was hungry.

The company of Albert and his cooking would not be entirely unwelcome. It would, in any case, upstage being alone with Vetinari and some spooky assassins in the dark beneath the city.

At first he didn't recognize the smell that mingled with the dampness of the tunnel. But the dampness lessened and the smell got stronger, until Sam realised where he had smelled it before: It reminded him of home. Of the very rare, peaceful evenings in front of the fireplace, but even more so of the large building in which Sybil kept her dragons, especially after one of them had exploded. In other words, it smelled burned.

Whoever was down here apparently didn't like the cold, so they had a nice warm fire somewhere. Nothing wrong with that – made it easier to find them in any case. Except that Vetinari seemed to know where to go anyway, and the not unpleasant smell of burned wood mingled with the fainter but very unpleasant smell of burned flesh.

Which should have reminded him of dinner at home, or even dinner made by Albert, or at least of Nobby roasting something unrecognizable over a burning ton. But somehow it didn't.

The fell silent. There was a lot more to ask, but somehow Vetinari projected the words DON'T TALK TO ME in glowing letters into the air around him. Sam could almost smell that, too, and like everything else here, it smelled of death.

His, to be exact. So he followed without a word and tried to figure out what to expect when they reached their destination. It had to be right around that corner. Or the next.

It wasn't around the next corner. However, behind the next corner they saw the faint shimmer of light reflected on the damp walls, and that was at least a start.

It got stronger, while the air remained chilly. Eventually Sam could make out voices. They spoke quietly though not hushed, for who would hear them in this place? Sam made out three different voices, but even as they came closer, the words remained gibberish. He didn't know this language.

"Agathean, I presume?" he was whispering again, knowing it was useless but unable to help himself.

"Obviously." Even Vetinari sounded subdued. Sam knew he understood the language, but the patrician didn't offer any further information as to the topic of the conversation, so he assumed it wasn't relevant to their situation. Eventually the smell of burned flesh mingled with the smell of cooked carrots, and Sam thought that maybe the Agatheans were simply discussing dinner.

The dank, dark corridors were memory now. The place they had entered wasn't all that different from a normal, lived in house. The walls were naked and slightly damp, true, and there were no windows, but the stones were clean and in better condition than earlier, and the wood of the doors they passed looked new. The hinges were well oiled. They didn't make a sound when the door closest to them swung open to reveal an Agathean solider in full armour.

Vimes jumped back, as quietly as possibly, his heart racing while he silently cursed his body for its instinctive reactions that were making a fool out of him. Vetinari merely stepped aside in one fluid movement, apparently unwilling to test what would happen if one of the living collided with him. Perhaps he would have passed through him as one would pass through thin air. It would have been a sight to behold, but as it was, no one passed through anything.

The guard – for Sam was sure that was what the man was – moved on without paying them notice.

There was more light down the hall the guard had emerged from, and more guards. Sam saw two of them standing in front of a closed door at the end of the hall. Other than most doors they had encountered so far, this one was made of steel, and heavily locked. Like all good policemen, Sam Vimes was unable to look at a locked door without wondering what kind of criminal activity might be hidden behind.

He slipped into the hall just before the door fell closed, not sure what would happen if he stopped its movement and the Agateans saw. They had already discovered that the movement of objects was no problem for them as long as the action remained without consequences, but so far no one had witnessed their activity that could only be described as 'haunting the city'.

The door fell shut louder than it had any right to, in Sam's opinion. The sound echoed.

The hall was well lit, and it took all the common sense Sam could come up with (while keeping another, older and more primal kind of common sense firmly locked away) not to jump from shadow to shadow but walk towards the locked door right in front of the guards.

And since he was marvelling about shadows already: for the first time since re-entering the world of the living through the backdoor he found himself in a place providing enough light to see that he still had one. It was disconcerting, somehow. If the light didn't ignore them, then how could they be certain that everyone else did?

But the armoured men paid no attention to him. Sam walked up to them like the ghost he was, right under their noses, feeling almost childish glee for a second or two – until he heard the voices just barely audible through the heavy door. A man, shouting in Agathean, sounding angry and frustrated, and then another voice, producing a half suppressed scream of pain.

Sam froze, his heart suddenly racing. He knew that voice. Of course. Of course.

"Our destination is that way," the very same voice said, and a hand grabbed Sam's arm, almost gently dragging him back to the corridor. After a second, he tried to pull away, driven by the instinct to protect, to prevent injustice that was a part of his being. But the grip on his arm was surprisingly firm.

"Let me go!" Sam hissed with anger covering a hint of desperation. "I can…"

"No, you can't," Vetinari said in the same calm, measured voice. "This is a memory, Sir Samuel."

For a second, Sam stared at him, while the meaning and the truth of the words sank into his mind. Vetinari continued to walk towards the end of the hall, his eyes firmly set on the wooden door that led away from this place.

_I'll be back here,_ Sam silently promised. _I know where to look now. As soon as this is over and we're back alive, someone else can save the city. I'm going to save you._

So they'd better hurry up now. The sooner they got this over with, the less time was wasted in the lives of their past selves.

More time was wasted on the door: as they tried to open it, Vimes and Vetinari made the discovery that they were unable to. Stuck in the hall, just out of reach of their goal, Sam tried to disintegrate the wood with the power of his glare, and without doubt he would have succeeded eventually. However, a considerable time would have passed before the solid wood eventually gave up, and in that time Vetinari, who most likely had an even greater desire to leave this place, figured out why it wouldn't move: like proper ghosts, they were able to move objects only if no living person was looking at it. So all they had to do was wait for both guards to look somewhere else.

It was a long time before that happened – an hour at least, though Vetinari claimed it was about a minute. The hall didn't offer the two guards a lot to look at except for the door straight ahead. Eventually Vimes went over to a torch on the wall that was not being directly stared at by any of them and let it drop to the stone floor. It distracted the two men enough for them to escape.

Back in the corridor there would have been a good moment for the patrician to comment on Vimes' cleverness in regard to distracting the guards. He did instead comment on Vimes tendency to stray off the path and show up where he wasn't needed. Sam considered reconsidering his vow to come back here once he was alive.

The voices they had heard earlier still drifted through the corridor. But now another voice had joined the foreign conversation, and Sam needed almost a minute before he realised that he didn't really hear it. It spoke right in his head, a little bit like Death's voice, but with less substance, merely the memory of having heard the words without them ever consulting his ears.

The most wonderful thing about it, though, was that he understood every none-existent word. It was one of the few advantages of avoiding language while talking.

_The time is at hand_, the person… the being said. Another voice answered, right there behind that half closed door Vetinari was stopping in front of. Unfortunately this one was very real and very Agathean. Sam was about to ask the patrician what it had said, but something told him it would be unwise to make any noise with this inhuman creature anywhere near them.

_No_, the being that could only be an Auditor replied to whatever had been said. _There is no risk. Your army shall approach undetected. Nothing can stop you. In few days this city will be yours._

- tbc

August 26, 2009


	11. Chapter 10

Author's note: Now this story is nearing its end, I want to thank all those who kept me motivated with their lovely comments – the new ones as well as those who miraculously remained faithful to this fic during years of hiatus. Due to continued internet problems I am quite unable to answer all comments individually, but know that usually they, well, make my day.

***

In the face of the fact that so far they had taken pains to sneak closer and make no sound in order to avoid being discovered by the being with the complete failing of audibleness, Vimes was somewhat surprised when Vetinari suddenly opened the door and boldly stepped into the room.

He followed. There was little else to do now, really, and Sam didn't want to be caught hovering in the doorway while a politician saved the day. Or failed to do so. Either way, Sam wanted his part in it, and so he ended up hovering just behind Vetinari, looking grim.

For the first time he got a look at the ones they had been eves dropping on. One was, to no surprise, an Agathean. He was tall and broad shouldered, and his armour was more elaborate that those of the guards they had been seeing. It also looked like he had never actually tested its use but only wore it to mark his position while he sent others into battle. Vimes instantly disliked him.

He had a black beard that ridiculed his thin eyebrows – Sam got a good look at his face when he turned around, alarmed by the sudden opening of the door. Instinctively, the commander of the city watch reached for a weapon that wasn't there, but the Agathean made no move to attack them. Instead he frowned, looked right through them and reached out to forcefully shut the door.

They were the wind now, Sam realised. A trick of the nerves. Irritating but insubstantial, inconsequential. The Agathean took no notice of them and was as little a threat to them as they were to him.

The other person in the room was a tall, thin man in a grey cloak. His head was covered by a hood but Sam could see enough of his face to know it was entirely unremarkable. His eyes wandered to the Agathean for a second, and already the face was gone from his memory. There was nothing for the mind to recall; two eyes, a nose, a mouth, completely average, nothing that set it apart from any other face. The only unique thing about it was its entire lack of uniqueness, and Sam's brain simply refused to accept this as a distinctive feature.

Where Death's domain had been black overall, this man gave off a general feeling of greyness. Even his face seemed grey, despite its colour being fairly average. He was giving the colour grey a bad name. Vimes began liking it less just looking at this guy.

This guy was looking right back at him. At them, to be exact. Actually, he was looking at Vetinari, and Vimes got the remains of his stare that somehow spilled over the patrician's shoulder. But the point remained that they were being looked at, which led to the conclusion that they were being seen.

Which was to be expected, really, and shouldn't creep him out at all. Being visible had been a natural state for Sam Vimes for a very long time, and this man was no man at all and well entitled to see them. His eyes upon them didn't surprise the watchman at all. But neither did them make him particularly happy.

The Auditor's expression changed from blank to blank, but it was a visible change that portrayed… something. Sam had no name for it, because he was sure the Auditor didn't either.

The grey man spoke first, or rather, he didn't. _He sent you_, he didn't observe aloud. Vetinari raised an eyebrow. (Vimes couldn't see it, but he knew anyway.)

"Indeed."

_He is breaking the rules. Again. We will not allow this._

"Death has not, in fact, broken any rules in allowing us to come here," Vetinari pointed out. "He merely bent them. He is forbidden to interfere, and that he didn't do."

"Also, he didn't break the rules any more than you did," Vimes added, hoping he'd got that part right. The Agathean commander looked around in confusion, then at the Auditor, saying something in his weird foreign language. Vimes didn't need to understand him, in this case.

_We will stop you_, the Auditor promised, ignoring his poor, confused partner in crime.

"I believe you cannot," Vetinari stated matter-of-factly. "Stopping us would be a direct interference, even more so than enabling this army to invade the city. It would be against the rules."

The Auditor was silent for a long moment. He didn't react in the slightest to the Angathean, who directed increasingly loud questions at him. Standing behind Vetinari and trying to look grim and determined rather than completely out of his depth, Sam wondered what that man would say if they had any way to tell him that he was currently participating in destroying the world.

Probably not much. People had a tendency not to care about things such as that. 'The world' was defined in their heads as 'all the parts of the world that do not concern me'.

It was amazing how people from all over the disk and all species were, in the end, all basically the same. It made what was happening even more stupid.

_Indeed_, the Auditor said eventually, making Vimes grimace. Apparently the thing had no own characteristics to speak of and copied what it saw and heard. Unfortunately, what it saw and heard was Havelock Vetinari.

Rolling his eyes, he waited for the creature to steeple its fingers. To its credit, it didn't.

_But we do not need to stop you. We need simply to prevent you from stopping us._

'_Tha__t doesn't actually change much about the situation,'_ thought Vimes. _'We didn't have a plan anyway.'_ Then he grimaced again and hoped the Auditor couldn't read his mind.

"And by 'we', I suppose you mean you?" Vetinari asked. The Auditor in his expressionless glory somehow managed to give off an air of disgust.

_There is no 'me'_, he expressed in the same way someone else might say that they did not eat rat excrement for breakfast.

"Of course not," the patrician said friendly. "My mistake. Allow me to rephrase: Is there more than one of you directly involved in this operation?"

_We are not directly involved in anything_, the Auditor let them know.

"And yet you are here," Vimes pointed out.

_Indirectly so._

"Ah. So that means you're not really here? Then how can you do anything?"

_We do not act. We present possibilities._

"By being neither active nor present." Vetinari nodded thoughtfully. "I must admit to having used similar tactics myself on numerous occasions. I do, however, fail to see how it would work in this situation."

_Your understanding is not necessary._

The Agathean apparently had enough of the one sided conversation that had nothing to do with him. He turned on his heels and was about to leave the room – only to find he couldn't. With a grunt of annoyance he pulled again, harder, but the door remained stubbornly closed. Vimes gave him a grim grin that was as invisible as the man leaning against the door, preventing it from being moved. He hadn't really expected this to work, but then, why wouldn't it? They couldn't pass through doors, so doors couldn't pass through them. To the living they were ghosts, but to inanimate objects they were very real.

Perhaps, Sam thought, there was some kind of silent solidarity between things that didn't live.

Enraged, the solider turned back to the Auditor. He snapped. The Auditor glared at Sam in a way that suggested a further decline of his vitality in the near future. He was quite glad that there was still a protective shield called Havelock Vetinari between him and the enemy. Vetinari, who looked at him and smiled. When he turned to the Auditor, the smile stayed on his face.

"You won't be able to leave here without taking direct actions against us. That, however, would break the rules. Which brings us back to the question of what you can do from this very room. I suspect, not a lot. It further brings back the question of how many of you are there to help you out. Since the harder the rules are bent the higher the risk of them breaking, I believe you are the only one."

The Auditor said nothing.

"I take that as a yes," Vetinari said. "And I'm quite curious what you are going to do now. In fact, your approach of this problem is of utmost interest to me."

'_I might just have saved the world, by leaning against a door,' _Vimes thought. _'And it's not even the weirdest day I ever had.'_

Then he fought the urge to abandon the door and run as the Auditor stepped up to him. The Auditor glared, somehow still failing to melt him. He then glared at Vetinari. And at the Agathean, for good measure. The Agathean shut up and cowered. The Auditor glared at Vetinari again, who returned the stare with friendly interest.

_You are starting to irritate__ me,_ the grey man declared, before he faded away with a faint, surprised, _Oh…_

Three men were staring at the point where he had been standing a moment before. The Agatehan made a confused noise somewhere deep in his throat.

Vetinari rubbed his chin. "I must admit, that was quite unexpectedly easy."

-

INDIVIDUALITY, FOR AUDITORS, IS INSTANEOUSLY DEADLY. FORTUNATELY THEY ARE IN THIS REGARD COLLECTIVELY NOT VERY BRIGHT.

The human called Vimes looked around sharply until his eyes found Death. "What the hell are you doing here?" he said. "Aren't we supposed to get back to life once we got rid of this thing? The last thing I expected was to see even more death."

Death got the impression this human didn't like him very much. It was a reaction he was not as used to as could be expected, since usually the people he met were quite beyond emotions when he met them.

"Did we succeed?" Vetinari asked before Death could point out that seeing more of him was always inevitable, unless one saw him for the last time. "Is the city safe now?"

YES. THERE WAS ONLY ONE OF THEM AT WORK. THEY WILL COME UP WITH ANOTHER PLAN.

"Great," Vimes said, though he didn't appear to be meaning it. "Right away?"

NO.

"Fantastic. Then we can return now? I'm hungry and could do with a proper meal in a proper body." Vimes gruff words only ineffectively covered his eagerness at the prospect of returning to life. Death couldn't quite understand his enthusiasm.

He glanced at the late patrician and was met with a calm gaze that told him no explanation was necessary. YOU MAY RETURN NOW, he said to Vimes. HOWEVER, IT IS BY YOUR STANDARDS STILL THREE HOURS UNTIL BREAKFAST.

The man suddenly hesitated. "You mean, I'll just go home and return to my bed? Just like that?"

NO, said Death. Vimes' face darkened.

"What do you mean, no? I thought we did it! You said we'd be able to return to life if we stopped the world from ending."

THE WORLD'S END CANNOT BE STOPPED. IT CAN MERELY BE POSTPONED. THAT YOU DID. AND YOU WILL NOW RETURN TO YOUR LIFE.

"But…?"

BUT NOT IN THE WAY YOU DESCRIBED. YOU WILL PASS THROUGH THIS DOOR AND WAKE UP IN YOUR BED. Death thought for a second. IN THE MORNING, he added, because perhaps the man wanted to know that.

"At the very break of dawn, I would believe," Vetinari added. "In your place, I might think about having Wilikins prepare food – a sandwich for instance – that can be consumed while running every night, just in case."

Vimes stared at him for a long moment, his face blank. The it screwed into grimace. "The murder on the university grounds!" he said. "Carrot will wake me before the sun even begins to come up. Damn, there goes my hope for breakfast."

YOU WILL NOT STARVE, Death offered in case that knowledge was comforting. According to the glare the watchman threw him, it wasn't.

-

"Wait a minute! How do you know about the murder? You weren't there!"

Sam eyed Vetinari, his eyes narrowed in suspicion. Vetinari raised his eyebrows.

"Oh, I believe I must have read it somewhere." His face was blank, the very picture of innocence. Sam felt the urge to jump over to him and kick his skinny arse. The guy had read his book after all. Bastard!

Either that, or he'd read it in one of the numerous, thick volumes about the city. His face revealed nothing, exactly as it should. Rolling his eyes, Vimes decided not to let himself be provoked. He could fight with the man another time. Now, he had better things to worry about.

Sam Vimes was a practical man. Already he was wondering if there was any way of bringing himself to wake up a little sooner, grab a snack, inform Carrot of the university murder (in which case the watch would know before the wizards, which would annoy the wizards and fill Vimes with a certain glee) and then grab a few men with many weapons and get Vetinari out of this hole. He couldn't come up with something, but was convinced he would defeat sleep if only he would wish to wake up very, very badly.

He also was an impatient man who wanted to finally get home to his family, his watch and his living body very badly. "Aren't you coming?" he grumbled in Vetinari's general direction. There was no rule saying he could only go back with the patrician at his side, but after everything it felt wrong to go ahead without him.

"No," said Vetinari, calmly, somewhere behind him.

Vimes, already facing the door to freedom, turned around, frowning. "Why not? Do have any other plans for today?"

Vetinari's smile was thin, but perhaps more genuine than any Sam had seen on the man's face ever before. "I do indeed."

Sam was confused. And irritated. One caused the other. To him, this was a natural state of being. "Any chance of telling me what?"

"I'm afraid I can't tell you, for lack of information. Death, however, might know."

Sam looked over to the grim reaper who had retreated into the background, standing still and silent and creepy.

"What?" he asked, confused and all the same dreading the answer. This wasn't how this story was supposed to end.

"Over there, in that cell, I'm already dying," Vetinari confirmed. "I have no desire to return to life simply for a repetition of that particular experience, which I didn't enjoy very much the first time."

Sam was silent for a long time. This was odd. It was the oddest way he had ever received note of a passing. Things like that didn't become any less awkward if you received note from the deceased himself.

'Sorry' seemed to cover it even less than usually.

"Since when did you know that?" he asked, feeling anger because it was easier than feeling lost. Lord Vetinari was dead. He had often wished for it, but never really thought it might actually happen while he was still around.

Or ever.

"Since the beginning. I saw the hourglass representing your life, and mine. Yours is bigger by a considerable amount." The patrician smiled the cool, distant smile he no longer had any need for. "You are going to live a long life, Sir Samuel."

He only used Sam's first name when addressing him in this manner. Other than the common noble, Havelock Vetinari appeared to have as little love for the lack of distance usually found in the upper class. As if they were all friends. They weren't. They all hated each other and acted like best friends to pretend they didn't know. Just waiting for the right moment to stab the 'best friend' in the back.

"In a city ruled by whom?" Sam asked. This couldn't be happening. He saw the guild leaders, the noblemen in front of his mind's eye and was unable to imagine a future shaped by them in a manner that didn't make him want to scream.

He became aware he was accusing Vetinari of neglecting his duty to the city by dying horribly, but didn't see anything wrong with that.

He got the eyebrow by that, but it was accompanied by a half-smile. "That, I believe, is ultimately up to you."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Time is not standing still. You should return soon, unless you wish to be delivered right into the middle of a group of agitated sorcerers discussing the advantages of dead students over living ones."

"Are you going to answer my damn question?"

"It's quite obvious that I will not. Do have a good life, Sir Samuel." For a second, the patrician's (for that was what he, and _only_ he, would always be to Sam Vimes) smile turned into something resembling a smirk. "Don't let me detain you."

-

"What will happen to him?" Sam had asked, after Vetinari had retreated into the background like Death had before and seemed to all but fade from existence. Sam had known he was still there, because he felt he was being stared out of the room. The knowledge that it would be the last time wasn't as comforting as it should be.

I DON'T KNOW. Death's answer hadn't been helpful either.

"How can you not know? You're Death! You're supposed to know this kind of stuff."

THERE ARE INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES. IN THIS CASE, I CAN'T TELL. NOTHING SEEMS SET YET.

"Typical. Has to make it difficult for everyone."

It had been time to go. Sam had felt it. If he wanted to leave, he had to do it now. And so he had left, with a last look at the shadows and a whispered "Take care of him, somehow, if you can" he'd passed through the door into nothing.

The next coherent thought he managed was that Carrot really, really had a loud voice when he was agitated.

- tbc

September 21, 2009


	12. Epilogue

Carrot never took over his rightful position as ruler of Ankh-Morpork. He never needed to; everyone knew who he was even if everyone, first of all himself, lived in happy denial. And there was an unspoken agreement between the watch and whoever was sitting in the oblong office at the time: the patrician would not become a sociopathic tyrant, and in return the watchmen would not cut off his head and replace him with Carrot.

About this, too, Carrot was in happy denial, or perhaps genuine ignorance. Sam Vimes never figured out for certain. He did, however, figure out that it didn't matter, as long as it worked.

The watch had been rebuild and reformed during the years of Vetinari's regency. It was his watch as much as it was Vimes', and no one ever dared to touch it. At least not more often than once.

To Vimes, Vetinari always remained patrician, to matter who happened to sit on his chair. He compared every new ruler with him and always came to the conclusion that during Vetinari's regency, things had been better. That was hardly surprising – no mater how often he had cursed the man, he'd always been aware that Vetinari's ruthless cleverness, his dedication to the city, and his style had made him perfect for the job in a way no other could match. Keeping his position by being better than any alternative had come easily to him. It was not quite as easy for the ones who came after him, but somehow, as a whole, they managed.

He never told Sybil what had happened in what was, for her and everyone else, just a normal night briefly before a political situation with the Agathean Empire occurred, that somehow got solved by Leonard da Quirm, the wizards of the Unseen University and a couple of clerks from the palace Sam had never seen before and never saw again. He had no reason for his silence, except that somehow he didn't want to share this story.

But twenty years later, when he handed over the watch to Carrot for good, he told his son how he and Havelock Vetinari saved the disk from beyond the grave. Perhaps one day, Sammy would pass on the story to his own children.

Perhaps not.

This, too, didn't really matter in the end. The story had been told, and to Vimes that was enough.

-

Sometimes Vimes wondered how Vetinari was doing. That this was a strange question to ask about someone long dead never occurred to him. He tried to imagine that he passed on to wherever it was he was supposed to be, but then, Vetinari was supposed to be in this city, and any other image never stuck. It seemed off. Retirement didn't suit him.

It didn't suit Vimes either. Fortunately, a number of half-hearted assassination attempts, three political and one explosive conspiracies and two wars made sure he never got bored. At east the word didn't attempt to commit suicide again – or if it did, it was someone else who stopped it.

Sybil never complained about his inability to get old in peace and tranquillity. She knew him too well. In the end, he had to accept all on his own that there were people better suited now for heroism than him. Especially if those heroic acts required climbing up walls.

Or running very fast.

Or, at some point, breathing.

-

As the proverb went, if you were above a certain age and woke up one morning feeling no pain, then you were dead. The proverb evidently had been made up by someone who was far below that certain age, or at least not dead, as they evidently had no idea what they were talking about.

True, there were aces and pains that came with getting older, and they multiplied rather quickly in a life consisting mainly of being shot at and the occasional exploding dragon. But due to their consistency, Vimes got used to them and for the most part they were ignored. He didn't constantly catalogue them in his head, nor did he wake up every morning (or, as time passed, every night, three times) and went through a mental checklist of suffering. He didn't think, 'Well, the pain in my back is there, and my knee is giving me hell, and, yes, if I move this arm to much, it sends waves of agony to my shoulder. Wonderful! I am still alive and can get up to start my day.'

Usually, that mental checklist only presented itself when he tried to stand.

It didn't this time, because an attempt to get out of bed was no made. Vimes woke up and saw from the golden light falling in through the windows that it would be a beautiful autumn day. He then saw that the bed beside him was empty, meaning he was rather late in waking up and Sybil as probably long gone to feed her dragons. Finally, his gaze fell on the black-clad, hooded figure sitting opposite the bed on a chair and that was a dead giveaway.

Literally.

It surprised him how little this surprised him. Also, he found he didn't very much care. Dying in his bed had never been something he'd expected to happen to him, but there were worse ways to go, he supposed. Getting tortured to death in a dungeon under the city, for example. Even after all these years, the thought still made him shudder. Though he wasn't quite sure what he was shuddering with right now.

"It's time, then?" A silly question – Death didn't usually pop in for a friendly visit, and this wasn't exactly one of those situation when he chose to hover nearby, waiting to see if Vimes would survive his recent brush with death, or not. Being in bed didn't tend to sharpen his senses this way.

"Quite right," the hooded figure said. "In fact, it's over time. I have been waiting all morning."

Vimes blinked. Death usually articulated his words in much more grave tones, and come to think of it, he didn't normally sit around with one leg drawn up and his scythe lazily resting against his shoulder.

And most of all, he usually didn't speak in the voce of Havelock Vetinari.

"…what?" he asked in what he supposed to be a rather dumb voice. The figure on the chair shifted a little and pushed back the hood.

"Good morning, Sir Samuel," Vetinari said. "I see you've been taking good care of my city."

Vimes stared some more. Absurdly, the only thing he could think about was how unfair it was that he had to bother with the body of a Very Old Man while Vetinari still looked exactly as he always had. Then he looked down and found that his own hands looked considerable younger than the wrinkled old things they had become – and naturally he didn't have to bother anymore with the old body he no longer resided in.

On second thought, he did reside it in, partially, if only because the still figure lying on the bad and the ghost sitting on it happened to occupy the same space. Having noticed that, Vimes quickly got up, because that was just plain weird.

"Where's Death?" he asked because it seemed a good placed to start. "And more importantly, why are _you_ here? I thought you'd move on or something."

"Death is busy elsewhere. Everywhere, in fact, I should think. He is also at his house, playing with a cat he rescued. An enviable ability to have."

"Playing with cats?"

"Being in several places at once. Please, Vimes, do try to keep up. As for my presence here: Death didn't quite know what to do with me. Apparently I have no place to move on to, so I stayed and took over his duties in Ankh-Morpork."

Vimes let that sink in. "So you've been around all the time?"

"Not in that sense, but more than you probably think. People have a fascinating tendency to wind up death in your proximity."

Sam had noticed that. He thought of Lord Downey, who somehow, miraculously had managed to die of old age not too long before him. "I bet some of them were quite surprised to see you again."

Vetinari gave him a smile that was almost happy and refused to comment on that.

Now he thought about it, Vimes had not been particularly surprised about this either. Shocked, yes, but mainly because he'd expected someone else. He had never really thought Vetinari would just vanish and be gone, after all. He liked giving people a hard time too much for that.

It was hard to imagine him as Death's assistant, so Vimes didn't. Instead, he imagined that Death had had to adjust to a lot of subtle changes in the organisation of his work. That seemed about right.

"You two get along?" he asked carefully, and earned an amused half-smile in return.

"Surprisingly well."

Vimes wasn't surprised at all. Death and Vetinari were too much alike in several ways not to get along splendidly.

Now he was a few steps away from his own corpse, Sam noticed a thin, almost invisible thread connecting the body to whatever he was now. Instinctively, he knew that this was the only thing still holding him in this place.

"And what do you do there when you're not around killing people?" he asked.

"We do not kill people. We merely deliver them."

"And where are you going to deliver me?"

"Hm?" Vetinari crooked his head, as if Sam had just pulled him out of an interesting thought with a very stupid question. Then he gave him a thin but strangely warm smile. "I believe it is time to find out." His scythe moved down and severed the thread that held Sam Vimes in this place, this life, this world.

The world adjusted, and settled down, and moved on. It always did.

-

The rite of AshkEnte was not often performed. It served to call Death and bind him, but because it was a powerful and impressive spell only ancient sorcerers ought to perform it, and the more ancient a sorcerer became, the less eager was he to meet Death.

As with so many things, the rules concerning this particular rite were based on tradition rather than practicality. In fact, no ancient person had to be present, least of all eight to chant and drip candle wax and blood all over the place. The age of the participants didn't matter, and candles, complicated, colourful symbols and human sacrifices were as unnecessary as any kind of singing. All that had to be sacrificed was a mouse, or alternatively a potential chicken in form of an egg.

Of course, the students at the Unseen University found out about this. And of course, they had to try. There was no reason for it; there was nothing they wanted Death to do for them. They just had to try, to see if it would work. Students, even magical ones, were like that, as long as their activity was not related to homework.

So they got an empty room, an egg, and three pieces of wood, and set to work, just to see what would happen.

The second reason why the rite of AshkEnte was rarely performed was that the sorcerers had long since found out in nine of ten cases, they didn't exactly get what they had been calling for.

Now these students learned this as well. By the end of the night, they agreed to forget about this spell, and newer speak of it again.

They also all of them individually decided to move to another city before they died.

Or better yet, to another continent.

-

- End

October 23, 2009

**

A big Thank You to everyone who took the time to leave a review! You are fantastic!


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